Yesterday, Linda McMahon (R, WWE) had a bad day. She accepted the endorsement of an organization that promotes freezing the minimum wage. Then reporters asked her about the minimum wage. Unfortunately for her, $50 million doesn't buy you an understanding of what low-wage workers do every day. It also doesn't buy you a staffer who briefs you properly on the minimum wage either. She had no idea how much a minimum wage job pays.
Making matters worse (for her), the headline in the New London Day echoed others around the state: "McMahon: Congress Should Consider Lowering Minimum Wage"
The Huffington Post even got in on the action and led with the story for a few hours:
But the big question I had was... WWBD? What will Blumenthal do?
In about 24 hours, he had an ad on the air. And it uses the minimum wage issue to drive home his central campaign theme: Linda put profits before people.
Brilliant. Well done. A+ to his ad team and full campaign.
You know, there has been some quiet (and not-so-quiet) grumbling among Democrats in Connecticut that Blumenthal was not being aggressive enough. When I asked campaign workers, they all said "we'll be hitting back," but we all were wondering when. Blumenthal landed his first TV ad punch about ten days ago, taking on McMahon for her barrage of negative mail (if you live in CT, you get a mailer every other day, some are like 16-page magazines) and TV ads. That was a jab, as it turns out. With this new ad, Blumenthal is hitting hard.
Of course, he'll still be outspent 5- or 10-to-1 on TV. You can get this ad on more TVs in our state in this must-win race. Donate.
Note: Sorry for the boxing references. It seems this race requires metaphors involving acts of physical violence. I did avoid use of the word "Smackdown," so I'm at least marginally more clever than 95% of bloggers and journalists writing about this race for control of the US Senate.