American Crossroads Will Focus Funds on Senate Races
American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS haven’t met their goals of raising $52 million yet — at least not according to their latest IRS disclosure forms — but the two tax-exempt organizations claim they’re on track and are beginning to give hints as to how they’ll blow their cash:
“„Mike Duncan, chairman of American Crossroads, told The Washington Times that his group and American Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies plan to plow more than $49 million of it into 11 Senate races in anticipation that the Republican Party is within reach of a Senate majority.
“„And, in an inversion of the usual image of “coattails” descending from the top of the ticket to a party’s candidates for lower offices, he says a number of Senate seats are in play because of the strength of strong House candidates in the respective states.
“„“People thought it wasn’t possible, but Republicans now have a good chance of winning control of the Senate – in part because we have a good chance of taking the House,” he said.
The groups are basing their optimism about taking back the Senate partly on a poll conducted by the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies, which tested 1,300 likely voters across 13 states, rendering a state-by-state sample size that’s so small, it makes the results effectively meaningless.
Nonetheless, Duncan argues the poll shows Republican candidates leading by an average of 8 points in Republican-held Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire and Ohio, and ahead by 7 points in Democrat-held Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Washington. Of those thirteen Senate battleground states, American Crossroads pledges to spend money in eleven of them — candidates in Delaware and Indiana look like they’re on their own.
