As U.S. Rep. John Barrow, D-Augusta, gets back to legislating this week in Washington, the ads continue to fly in Georgia's only competitive U.S. House race.
We start above with Barrow's new effort today. This one has a bringing-home-the-bacon message -- not far off from his Savannah Port promotion -- but targeted at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The agency has been under a harsh spotlight lately, but through the eyes of one rural Georgia vet, Barrow highlights how he fought for years to bring a VA primary care clinic to Statesboro. It opened last year.
The National Republican Congressional Committee then dropped $154,000 (per Politico) on the below, also using the "real Georgian" perspective.
A small business owner in Augusta complains of oppressive taxes and regulations from the federal government and declares of Barrow: "Whatever Obama’s wanting, he’s voting with it."
With that line, the NRCC shows that Barrow voted with the president's position 85 percent of the time in 2009. His loyalty scores have fallen drastically since then, to 35 percent last year, as factcheck.org pointed out in calling the stat overly "narrow."
The fact checkers are dinging both sides in this war. Witness the newest offering from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee:
It's about Barrow's Republican foe, Augusta businessman Rick Allen. Once again the DCCC examines Allen's business career in a way that sound like an attack from the right on taxes and government spending.
This one features a faceless businessman writing checks, with narrated attacks on Allen's background that factcheck.org has already pointed out rely "on innuendo and omission."
The latest DCCC buy had $160,000 behind it, bringing its anti-Allen spending to about $600,000 for the year so far.
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