U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan has a new campaign ad featuring the person he hopes to call a colleague: Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
On the one hand, the 30-second spot is just a classic endorsement, with Murkowski indoors, looking straight at the camera:
“I need a partner in the senate who will work to advance Alaska’s interest, not the Obama agenda,” she says.
Anchorage pollster Marc Hellenthal says endorsements usually don’t move voters, but this one is different because s Lisa Murkowski is the most popular person in Alaska.
“She has the highest positive and the lowest negative of any public figure or politician in the state,” Hellenthal says.
Hellenthal also thinks the ad will also be effective because Sullivan was a relative unknown in Alaska as recently as a year ago*.*
“So people rather than just get their information from Sullivan’s TV ads, Sullivan has now been sponsored by someone they have a long history with – Lisa Murkowski.”
Hellenthal says it could tip the scales, because even among Democrats, Murkowski ranks just a hair below Begich in popularity.
“We’ve got basically a dead heat between Sullivan and Begich, so one or two percent could be the difference in an election.”
The Begich campaign responded that, despite what Murkowski says, she and Begich voted the same way 80 percent of the time in the first half of the year, and 60 percent of the time during the years they’ve served together. Begich campaign spokesman Max Croes sent a long list of issues where Begich and Murkowski are aligned. Both senators, for instance, support legal access to abortion, raising the federal minimum wage and legalizing gay marriage. Sullivan has opposed all three.
But whatever their differences, Murkowski is standing with Sullivan …
“Alaska needs Dan Sullivan,” she says.
… While she told Begich earlier this summer to stop using her picture in his campaign ads.
Liz Ruskin is the Washington, D.C., correspondent at Alaska Public Media. Reach her at lruskin@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Liz here.
