Club for Growth Action will go up with a new ad boosting Kansas representative Tim Huelskamp in the final week of his fiercely competitive primary race.
The ad, provided first to National Review, attacks Huelskamp’s Republican challenger, Dr. Roger Marshall, as insufficiently conservative.
“Don’t be fooled,” the narrator says in the ad, listing off positions of Marshall’s that the Club deems too far left. “Roger Marshall: a liberal backed by political insiders,” the narrator adds.
The Club’s political arm has purchased $130,000 in ad time for the final week of the race, bringing the group’s total spending on behalf of Huelskamp’s reelection to over $400,000. It is the second ad Club for Growth Action has run to boost Huelskamp. The new ad will go on air tomorrow.
The Club’s i is reflective of how difficult this race has proven for Huelskamp — Club for Growth Action does not usually spend heavily to help incumbents, and this is a large ad buy for the district. But there is reason for them to spend: A poll conducted by the Docking Institute of Public Affairs from July 11 through July 21 found Huelskamp and Marshall locked in a tie race, 40.3 percent to 40.9 percent, with 15.3 percent of voters remaining undecided.
Huelskamp’s voting record has endeared him to conservatives, but he has repeatedly alienated some interest groups in his district, and has clashed with House leadership on multiple occasions. One such clash resulted in his removal from the Agriculture Committee, a blow to a congressman representing a predominately agricultural constituency. Huelskamp’s removal from Agriculture has become a major point of contention in the campaign, with Marshall arguing that he would have a better shot of getting a spot on the committee in the next Congress. The Kansas Farm Bureau endorsed Marshall earlier this month, in a public rebuke of Huelskamp that highlighted his strained relations with some agricultural interests in his district.
The primary is August 2. Given the district’s deep-red tinge, whoever wins will almost certainly be heading to Congress.