Outside money continues to pour into the 5th Congressional District race this week, with an Ohio based super-PAC spending $1.1 million on a media buy in support of state Sen. Andrew Roraback’s campaign.
The Government Integrity Fund Action Network of Ohio has reserved about $1.1 million worth of television time between Oct. 15 and Election Day, according to a recent report by Politico.
The action fund has been reportedly tied the the secretive Government Integrity Fund, a “social welfare” nonprofit that doesn’t have to reveal its donors.
The fund, according to reports, has spent more than $1 million in an attempt to oust Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.
According to latest Federal Elections Commission reports filed in July, the only donors to the Government Integrity Fund Action Network is the Government Integrity Fund and New York City conservative businessman Roger Hertog, who donated $10,000 to the group in June.
Jeb Fain, a spokesman for Roraback’s opponent in the race, Elizabeth Esty, quickly took the opportunity to say that House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, “must have liked what he heard from Senator Roraback” when he spoke during a fund raising event for the candidate at the Hartford Club on Tuesday.
“Andrew Roraback has made it clear that he shares the economic agenda of the right-wing groups and Republicans who are supporting him,” Fain said, adding that the media buy from the Ohio based super-PAC is its first outside of its home state.
Roraback himself decried outside funding in the race back in August when late in the primary season a union backed super-PAC, Patriot Majority USA, spent $208,000 attacking Roraback in a t.v. ad as a supporter of higher taxes.
Roraback held a press conference in front of the Democratic State Central Committee offices shortly after the ad was unveiled calling the campaign “an unprecedented, historic, outrageous subversion of our political process.”
Esty however has benefited the most from outside funding sources in the race up until recently. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee purchased a media buy worth $246,000 earlier this week in opposition of Roraback’s campaign, according to the Federal Elections Commission.
To date the DCCC has dumped nearly $800,000 into the race, according to the FEC, in advertisements that paint Roraback as a vote in support of tea party Republicans if he is elected to congress.
Esty has also been outspoken against outside funding sources during the primary season when the New Directions for America super-Pac spent nearly $500,000 in support of Dan Roberti’s campaign using the money to launch negative attack ads against Esty and House Speaker Chris Donovan.
At the time Esty said “I think I need hip waders, it’s getting so deep out there.”
If she needed hip waders then, she might consider investing in a full body suit for the mud slinging likely to take place in the next few weeks leading up to Election Day.