Senator Heidi Heitkamp Begins Biggest Campaign of Her Political Life…With a Recycled Ad From 2012?

Senator Heidi Heitkamp, appearing in her first television ad of the 2018 election cycle which is a re-run of an ad she ran in 2012.

Incumbent Democrat Senator Heidi Heitkamp’s campaign is out with their first ad of the 2018 election cycle, and I think the (mostly out of state) contributors who have put millions in Heitkamp’s campaign hoping she can stop a Republican takeover of a Senate seat the Democrats have held since the Truman administration.

It kinda seems like a rush job. The ad is a recycle of one Heitkamp ran in her 2012 campaign. “Her first television spot of the cycle is a repurposed a digital ad from 2012 that featured four of her sisters and her brother Joel, a radio talk show host in North Dakota,” Roll Call reports. “The ad was edited to reflect that she is now running as the incumbent.”

What a bizarre choice. Maybe the Heitkamp campaign, troubled by the Senator’s plunging approval numbers, felt they had to get something out before the North Dakota electorate to stop the bleeding.

Here’s the 2012 iteration of the ad, which was available online from the Heitkamp campaign until just recently:

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Here’s the ad Heitkamp posted on Twitter this morning:

I grew up with a big family in a small North Dakota town — that's where I learned the value of hard work and the art of compromise. But don't just take my word for it, hear it from my family. #NDSen#NDPol#HH4NDpic.twitter.com/9FfobXzmit

I think a lot of people will be tempted to say that the Senator is mailing it in, but I don’t think that’s accurate. Heitkamp has raised a lot of money. Her campaign will do a lot more than tweaking her 2012 television ads for 2018.

I really do think this ad was a rush. The Senator getting something positive in front of an electorate that seems to be souring on her.

Will it work though? Because this seems a little insulting. As if Heitkamp’s campaign is saying that North Dakota voters are too dumb to realize that they’ve seen this song and dance before.