The anti-Trump conservative group known as The Lincoln Project is not confining their ire to the president — they’re also going after his enablers in Congress. Among other affronts against his political allies, The Lincoln Project has released a hard-hitting new video ad that accuses Iowa’s Republican U.S. Senator Joni Ernst of failing to stick up for the people of her state. Ernst, like many other Republican Senators, quite closely follows the party line, as set by the president and Mitch McConnell. Ernst is running for re-election in a close race against Democrat Theresa Greenfield. FiveThirtyEight calls their race a toss-up as of Wednesday.
The new Lincoln Project ad singles out Ernst’s support for the Trump administration’s disastrous trade policies and her similar support for their disastrous response to the Coronavirus pandemic. The president’s punitive, tariff-driven trade war with China has left American farms struggling, and the Coronavirus pandemic has claimed just about 1,500 lives in Iowa alone.
In the Lincoln Project ad, a narrator says, in part:
‘When times are this tough for Iowa families and farmers, you’d think Joni Ernst would stand up, speak up, and fight for us, but Iowa’s figured out Joni never had it in her to do the right thing. Since Joni got to Washington, she spends her time kissing up to Mitch McConnell, voting with him and against Iowa, time and again. On trade, she sticks with a Trump plan that’s driving too many Iowa farms to bankruptcy. On COVID, she’s never confronted the White House deceptions that cost so many Iowa lives… A real Iowa leader would do everything she could to protect us. A real Iowa leader would stand for what’s right — not for what’s easy.’
Check out the full ad below:
A real Iowa leader would do everything she could to protect us — but not Joni Ernst.
She decided to do what’s easy, not what’s right. pic.twitter.com/J8IZkF1UBu
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 14, 2020
The last time that Ernst had an outright lead in a poll cataloged by FiveThirtyEight was when a Fabrizio Ward/ Hart Research Associates from late August/ early September found her ahead by 5 percent, although she and Greenfield have been tied in a couple polls since that survey. Broadly, Democrats are “slightly favored” to win control of the Senate, according to FiveThirtyEight. Democrats are doing well in U.S. Senate races in Colorado, Arizona, Maine, and elsewhere.
Check out Twitter’s response to the new Lincoln Project ad below:
