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Democrats apparently think they've got a new campaign issue.

Over the weekend, the head of the National Institutes of Health suggested to the Huffington Post's Sam Stein that there mightcurrently be an Ebola vaccine if NIH hadn't undergone a steady decline in funding over the past decade.

"Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would've gone through clinical trials and would have been ready," Francis Collins said.

That's a pretty bold assessment. And now, Democrats are latching on to it.

On Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched banner Webads against Republicans, hitting them for voting to cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control. The ads echo an August TV adfrom Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) hitting Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) for votingagainst the reauthorization ofpublic health and emergency programs that included pandemic response.

Here's the DCCC ad:

Also on Monday, there was aWeb videomaking a similar point from The Agenda Project a liberal group that is fond of reminding us that it launched the ads in which "Paul Ryan" pushed granny off a cliff. (Warning: Some brief, graphic content in the new Ebola ads.)

Editor's note: This ad contains graphic images. The Agenda Project Action Fund, a progressive non-profit group, blames Republican spending cuts for Ebola deaths in this ad. (The Agenda Project via YouTube)

Neither effort has a huge amount of money behind it, and the latter ad is pretty low-rent. But it does appear that Democrats/liberals are at least toying with the idea of hitting Republicans for voting to cut funding to things like NIH and CDC.

As we've noted before, though, Americans at this point are actually pretty unconcerned that Ebola will have an impact on them directly. It's a really buzz-worthy news story, but it's not clear that it's a huge voting issue for many folks right now. Pryor, for instance, hasn't gone back to the well on Ebola, and probably won't after what happened last week.

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The Fix: Democrats launch an Ebola trial balloon

Political ads tend to go one of two ways: pump up your candidate or knock down the opponent.

As Democrats wade into the Senate race in South Dakota, theyve chosen to try to knock down Republican Mike Rounds with negative adsbut the calculation is complicated. Any points Democrats can score by attacking Mr. Rounds will help not just their candidate Rick Weiland, but also independent candidate Larry Pressler.

Backing Mr. Weiland while helping Mr. Pressler as well may be the best bet for Democrats in South Dakota as theDemocratic Senatorial Campaign Committeesurprised many by pumping $1 million into a state that leans heavily Republican.

The political climate and landscape for Democrats in South Dakota is extremely bleak, said Emily Wanless, assistant professor of government at Augustana College in Sioux Falls.

In the coming weeks, she said Mr. Pressler has a better chance of making the surge needed to beat Mr. Rounds. Polls show Mr. Rounds, who was governor of South Dakota from 2003 to 2011, leading in a race the GOP needs to win to take control of the Senate. Mr. Weiland and Mr. Pressler are competing for second, although the overall race shows signs of tightening.

(See the latest poll averages in the South Dakota race.)

Mr. Pressler served in the U.S. senate for three terms as a Republican, helping him to attract GOP voters who are less than thrilled with the campaign of Mr. Rounds. But his positions on issues from same-sex marriage to a Native American holocaust museum will appeal to some Democrats who see a vote for Mr. Weiland as a waste in such a Republican state. Mr. Pressler has been coy about which party he would caucus with if elected.

In his campaign, Mr. Pressler has been highlighting his record from a generation ago in ads showing him with Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and pointing to his honesty during the Abscam inquiry in the late 1970s and early 1980s. While trailing in fundraising, hes benefiting from a steady stream of ads from outside groups such Every Voice Action, pointing to the alleged mismanagement of a federal visa program when Mr. Rounds was governor.

The Democrats followed the outside groups in the ad that started running over the weekend, pushing the visa issue with the words Schemes. Special Favors. Investigations, blasted across the screen as it ends.

Mr. Rounds in recent weeks has accused his opponents of trying to invent a scandal as a way to divert attention from key issues on which theyre out of step with South Dakota voters. But the unique dynamic has drawn the attention of Republicans, with the partys senate campaign arm planning $1 million in ad spending to defend Mr. Rounds and highlight his positions, including opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

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Democrats Attack Republican Rounds in Triangulated South Dakota Senate Race

Maine stateRep. Henry Beck (D) predicts that when the dust settles afterNov. 4, his campaign budget will have topped out at just more than$10,000. It's a new spending record for him, the 28-year-old notes, in this, his fourth run for the Maine state legislature. But it's also just a fraction -- one-100,000th, actually -- of what Barack Obama spent last election cycleto be re-elected president of the United States of America.

Still, Beck has been using digital technologythat was once only available to campaigns with million-dollar budgets: online advertisements that target voters based on their Web browser 'cookies.'

During the 2008 election cycle, when Beck, then 22, made his first successful run for his home state legislature, such digital wizardry seemed like black magic. In 2012, political cookies were still bleeding-edge tech. In 2014, it's a power available to the Henry Becks of the world with a few dollars and few clicks.

It's part of what both Democrats and Republicansidentify as a powerful digital trend. The left has spent the last 10 years developingcampaign technologies, whether it's online advertising, the modeling of voter behavior, or volunteer contact management. This cycle, they say, they have figured out how to get those technologies to play well together -- and in turn make them available to even the smallest campaigns.

What, exactly, gives a state representativethe online ad sophistication tomatch Obama's? It's a new site, launched earlier this month, called DemocraticAds.com. The creators of the site, the D.C.-based firmDSPolitical, has bought up about 600 million browser cookies that contain personal details aboutsome 150 million voters in the United States. Their service isable to take the information contained in a person's "cookies" and match it against data collected about their voting profileto serve up targeted ads. Campaigns are thus ableto marry your online behavior -- what sites you visit -- with the characteristics that define you as a voter -- whether you are a registered Democrat, own a gun or go to express support for the environment.

In the old days,i.e., two years ago,hiring an ad buyer to generatesuch an ad campaign cost at least $20,000.But usingDemocraticAds.com, Beck's ads target themost valuable voters in his district of 8,700 residents along the banks of the Kennebec Riverfor a fee thatstarts at just $500.

Jen Nedeau is a senior director at Bully Pulpit Interactive, the Obama re-election campaign's preferred digital marketing firm. For even the best campaign strategists, she says, data-drivenonline ad buying was, until recently, abreakthrough. But the software the Obama campaign had to custom-buildis now available as off-the-shelf software. "What we've been able to do," says Nedeau, "is to scale the model from the Obama '12 campaign down to local races, from Terry McAuliffe to Bill de Blasio to Marty Walsh," naming Virginia's Democratic governor, and New York City and Boston's new Democratic mayors respectively.

But go evenfarther down the ballot past the de Blasios and the Walshes to the Henry Becks, say Democrats, and the effect is still powerful.Jim Walsh is the chief executiveof DSPolitical, the firm behind the D.I.Y DemocraticAds.com site."Getting someone elected to a state legislator or a city council can conceivably have more impact on people's daily lives than getting someone elected to the U.S. Senate," says Walsh, "especially since you can scale it."

The trick, Democrats say, if figuring out how races big and small can share the costs -- and benefits -- of the best technologies.

New examples pop up all the time.The D.C. technologyfirm NGP VAN, whose software is used by nearly every federal-level Democratic campaign in the country, recently held aproduct launch in front of a packed house of morethan 100 Obamans, campaign veterans, and non-profiteers in downtownWashington'sWoolly Mammoth Theatre. There it introduced something called the Analytics Pipeline, apiece of digital plumbingthat connects even the smallest campaigns to the top-dollar data analytics shops -- few of which existed more than a few years ago -- for just the $45.

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Democrats push Obama-quality digital tools all the way down to state House races

Meet the Key Districts: Gaining control of the Legislature will be doubly hard if the party loses a Senate seat in the Federal Way area.

Sun, Oct 12, 10 p.m.

Cars today and what tomorrow? Federal Way and neighboring areas are looking beyond the suburban strip mall.

Sun, Oct 12, 10 p.m.

All the pieces are there for the Democrats to control politics in Federal Way and nearby areas. Instead, they are likely to lose a state Senate seat they badly need to keep.

Editor's note: Big issues are looming for our state when the Legislature meets next year.Our roads and bridges are still crumbling. We're still staring at major, court-mandated upgrades to our education system. Gov. Jay Inslee's still pushing for action on climate change lest the acidifying Pacific dissolve every last oyster shell in Shelton. And, whatever we do (assuming we do something) means a battle over how to pay for it: raise taxes, close loopholes or cut services. This is the first of several reports on key districts in the upcoming Nov. 4 general election. The others, in our list revised after the primary results, are the 42nd District in the Northwest corner of the state and the 28th and 45th in central Puget Sound.

This is where the Washington Senate Democrats wobble the most. Where the D's are on defense big-time. The most likely extra Senate seat that the GOP might pick up in November.

It's the 30th Legislative District Federal Way and its sister suburbs.

It's a key to Democratic legislators hopes of moving forward on issues they and Gov. Jay Inslee have made priorites: money for school improvements, new measures to address climate change and passage of a long-stalled transportation package. For Republicans, the election is key to having a say on how those issues are handled, and holding down the rate of state revenue increases.

The Washington Senate is split between 26 members of the Majority Coalition Caucus and 23 minority Democrats. That means the minority Democrats need to hold onto all their seats and pick up two belonging to coalition members to gain control of the Senate, which would give them the governor's office, House and Senate. The 24 Republicans and two Democrats in the Senate majority coalition is the strongest hurdle to Gov. Jay Inslee's agendas, which is good or bad depending on your political beliefs.

Originally posted here:
Democrats' whole game plan at risk in 30th District Senate race

JANESVILLE, Wis. - Locked in a tough battle to hang onto their majority the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) is pulling out all the stops: they spent nearly $1 million a day in September helping embattled incumbents and promising candidates in the midterm election, according to a summary of their September finances.

The DSCC, which is the campaign arm for Senate Democrats, raised $16 million in September and had $14 million in cash to burn beginning in October. They began September with more than $25 million in the bank but spent $27 million during the month.

"As the campaign enters its final weeks, Democrats are in strong position to hold the majority," committee chief Guy Cecil said in a statement.

They managed to just edge out their GOP equivalent, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). They said last week that they raised $15.5 million in September but did not say how much cash they had at the ready.

The fundraising for both committees was at record level last month, underscoring how close the fight for Senate control has become and how much donors are willing to write checks. If Republicans can defend their current seats and flip six Democratic seats in their favor, they will become the majority party in the Senate for the first time since 2006.

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With just over four weeks before Election Day, several key races across the country are tightening up. CBS News Elections Director Anthony Salvan...

The latest CBS News/New York Times Battleground Tracker estimates that Republicans will recapture the Senate with a slim margin of just 51 votes. But there are several Democrats hanging on to their seats, as well as some races where the Republican candidate is unexpectedly vulnerable.

Republicans may have a history of better voter turnout during midterm elections, but Democrats are the ones with the fundraising prowess these days. Since January 2013, the start of the current election cycle, Democrats have raised $127 million, compared to the Republicans' $98 million.

That $29 million advantage has given Senate Democrats the ability to hire staff in crucial races to knock on doors, call voters and help candidates campaign against Republicans. They also have some leeway to spend in races that were previously were considered off limits, such as the Republican-favored race in South Dakota, where Democrats are now spending $1 million on ads.

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Facing loss of majority, Senate Democrats spending heavily