CLF attacks two House freshmen on budget in first ads of 2014 cycle

By Alexandra Jaffe - 03/22/13 08:43 AM ET

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC working to elect Republicans to the House, is out with its first ads of the 2014 cycle, targeting Reps. Joe Garcia (D-Fla.) and Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) for the lack of a balanced budget in Washington.

The ads are aimed at suburban moms and will run on cable shows geared towards women, as well as online, and feature a mother struggling to balance her own budget.

"She wants that new bike so bad…and I can’t figure out how to pay for it. It’ll just have to wait," the mom says.

A narrator then asks: "Families make tough decisions to balance their budget. Why can't Washington?"

CLF is spending $300 on the cable buy in Florida and $900 on the cable buy in New York, according to a source tracking ad buys. It's a very small amount for an air attack, though the cable and digital buy together, which will run from Monday through Friday next week, is in the four-figures, according to CLF spokesman Dan Conston.

The ad charges that the congressmen just voted against balancing the government's budget, a reference to their votes against Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget, which passed the House on Thursday on a largely party line vote. Every Democrat voted against it.

It balances the budget in 10 years, in part by cutting taxes, repealing the 2010 health care law and slowing the rate of growth in government spending.

And Republicans have attacked Democrats for voting against it, charging that they're supporting reckless spending and are far-removed from the average American family.

Maloney spokesperson Stephanie Formas dismissed the ad, and suggested that opposition to the Ryan budget was bipartisan. Ten Republicans voted against it, including Maloney's fellow New York Rep. Chris Gibson.

"This is simply a shady group of billionaires trying to end Medicare so they can get another tax cut. Representative Maloney was proud to join Republicans like Chris Gibson in opposing Paul Ryan's radical Tea Party budget because he believes it's wrong to end Medicare for seniors just to give more big tax breaks to billionaires," she said.

Up until now, CLF has issued attacks against 11 vulnerable Democrats, focusing on the potential cuts to Medicare resulting from the health care reform law.

Garcia and Maloney were not targeted in those initial round of attacks, but they remain some of the most vulnerable Democrats in the nation. Both are freshmen running in districts that lean Republican, and both are on CLF's list of top freshmen targets.

And the subject matter of the ad is an indication that CLF will work to put a group of voters typically seen as a swing demographic into play for the GOP — suburban mothers. Democrats, too, have said that they'll be reaching out to suburban moms in their efforts to take back the House.

Watch the ad: