West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, the state’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, is in a dire situation. She’s trailing her Republican opponent, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, by nearly 20 points, according to Real Clear Politics and the Ace of Spades Decision Desk.
So what’s a candidate in a desperate situation going to do to save her campaign? Why, continue the same ineffective attacks she’s been using all year, of course.
In leaked audio from a recent Tennant fundraiser, the candidate detailed her plan to close that 20-point gap, which included … nothing new.
“In our next set of messages, it is [sic] going to move us even closer in this race,” Tennant said. “And that’s right, we have a message that we talk about — Congresswoman Capito has benefited personally from her dealings with Wall Street. She’s benefited personally while West Virginians hurt.”
Tennant’s plan is to keep reminding voters that Capito’s top donor in 2012, the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, also hires lobbyists who work on banking issues. In 2011, Capito hired a former attorney for Sullivan & Cromwell, and two months later introduced a bill that would delay part of the Dodd-Frank bank bill for a year. (She introduced that bill with Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. The Senate never took up the bill because it split Democrats.)
Also, Tennant has been pointing out, Capito’s second top contributor in 2014 is Citigroup, which is a bank. Also that year, Capito’s husband took a job as the senior vice president for Wells Fargo’s Charleston, W.Va. offices. Wells Fargo is also a bank. (You might see a pattern here.) Capito also probably lives near a bank and even has a bank account.
Tennant has been running on this “issue” for months, and miraculously it has failed to gain her any traction. This could be in part due to Capito’s relative popularity and President Obama’s high disapproval rating in the state, thanks to his policies on coal. (Obama lost West Virginia to Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012 by 27 points.)
Tennant also told supporters at the fundraiser — which according to the poster of the audio occurred last week in Washington, D.C. — that this “is a tied race.” The latest polls showing her about 20 points back were taken at the beginning of September.
Capito’s campaign, meanwhile, has had the easy job of highlighting Tennant’s costly mistakes as Secretary of State.
In 2009, Tennant’s office posted the access codes for a conference call on its website, which a scammer used to rack up a $475,000 bill for West Virginia taxpayers. In 2012, Tennant’s office made an error on the Republican primary ballots, costing the state $148,705 for reprinting and distribution, which Tennant said would come from her office’s budget. And in June 2014, Tennant’s office had to remove business filings from its website after one image displayed someone’s Social Security Number.
