Former North Dakota Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp (D) is touting her support for veterans’ benefits in a new ad for her Senate campaign.
The video showcases her support for a new initiative, the Heroes Health Card, that would allow vets in areas underserved by the Veterans Administration (VA) to visit doctors in their own communities.
The ad features Charlie Weichel, a volunteer who drives fellow veterans to and from the VA hospital in Fargo — a three-hour trip from Bismarck. The Fargo VA hospital is the only one in the state, leading to 14-hour days of driving for Weichel.
“Veterans in places like North Dakota shouldn’t have to drive that far to see a doctor,” says Heitkamp in the ad. In the Senate, I’ll fight for a Heroes Health Card so they can see a doctor closer to home.
"I approve this message for heroes like Charlie," she says at the end of the ad.
It's yet another positive ad out from Heitkamp, who has largely avoided negative attacks against her opponent, Rep. Rick Berg (R-N.D.).
The positive tone appears to be paying off for Heitkamp. The last poll of likely voters in the state, conducted for North Dakota’s Democratic Party at the end of July, gave her a 6-point lead over Berg, with voters rating her much more positively.
Heitkamp is running in a Republican-leaning state, and past ads from her campaign have touted her bipartisan bona fides. In an ad released last month, she highlighted her split from the Obama administration on environmental policies unpopular in the state.
But the National Republican Senatorial Committee pushed back against the image of Heitkamp as a positive campaigner, with NRSC deputy spokesperson Lance Trover slamming her for hypocrisy and asserting that while she may be putting out largely positive ads, she's letting others do her dirty work for her instead.
“Heidi Heitkamp’s hypocrisy knows no boundaries: she was for ObamaCare before she was against it, she claims to be for the Keystone pipeline yet raises money for the very folks who are holding it up, and now she’s trying to fool voters into believing she’s running a positive campaign while allowing her pal Harry Reid to run scores of negative ads attacking Rick Berg," Trover said.
— This story was posted at 10:34 a.m. and updated at 4:27 p.m.
