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After primary win, Amodei targeted by progressive group for tax vote

Humberto Sanchez
Humberto Sanchez
CongressElection 2018
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Fresh off the heels of a dominant primary election victory, Republican Rep. Mark Amodei will soon be targeted by a progressive group in a $150,000 digital and television ad blitz over his vote for last year’s GOP-crafted tax law, which cut individual tax rates and repealed a centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act.

“For years, Mark Amodei has done the bidding of the Republican donors and special interests at the expense of his constituents—supporting the TrumpTax is just the latest example of him putting the wealthiest Americans first,” Not One Penny spokesperson Ryan Thomas said in a release.

Amodei Thursday took issue with the ads, saying that the law helped boost the economy by pushing the unemployment rate to its lowest level in over a decade and allowing people keep more of what they make.

“People’s taxes have gone down and there are more jobs, I mean, our problem is that things are going so well that affording a house is hard, even if you’re making great money,” he said Thursday. “But they’re still running ‘he’s a bad guy, [he’s] for the fat cats.’”

He also reprised a comment he made in April during a debate with GOP primary opponent Sharron Angle, dismissing a previous ad that Not One Penny ran against him at the time as containing “Not one penny of truth.”

Amodei expects more ads to come his way this election cycle. “TV stations love me,” he joked. “There are going to be a lot of bonuses paid in the ad departments in the Reno TV stations.”

The ads come after Amodei defeated challenger Sharron Angle Tuesday in the Republican primary for the 2nd Congressional District. Amodei won 72 percent of the vote.

His seat is considered solidly Republican by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Despite the relative safety of Amodei’s district, the group hopes to capitalize on what it believes is grassroots activism and progressive momentum on key issues in the district, including economic policy and health care. The ads are designed to highlight Amodei’s support of the tax law for his constituents. 

The campaign consists of a television ad and a digital ad.

The TV ad, which starts running in Reno on Friday and continues through the end of July, is titled “Jackpot.” The ad kicks off with a shot of the Reno Arch and then cuts to a spinning roulette wheel in soft focus while campy music plays in the background.

“People come here to hit the jackpot, but the richest one percent hit it big when Mark Amodei went to Washington and voted for Donald Trump’s new tax law,” the voice over begins.

The ad concludes with the line, “Tell Mark Amodei stop tax giveaways to the richest one percent.”

The digital ad is titled “Be A Hero” and will begin running next week on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It features Ady Barkan, the activist who has ALS and who confronted Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake on a plane last year before he voted in favor of the tax law. The law included a provision to repeal, beginning in 2019, the portion of the ACA that required most individuals to sign up for health insurance or pay a fine. The provision, known as the individual mandate, was included in the tax law to offset its cost. It was a key component of the ACA that was designed to help keep premiums down by forcing healthy people into the health-care system.

“I was shocked when Congress passed a tax bill that would take away health care from people like me to fund tax cuts for billionaires,” Barkan says in the ad. We “need to repeal this tax plan.”

Democrats in Congress have begun to campaign on health care ahead of the midterms. The move comes after the Department of Justice said it would not defend parts of the ACA in a lawsuit in Texas, including the protection banning insurance companies from charging more to cover pre-existing conditions.

“Over the coming months, Democrats will continue to lift up the stories of people impacted by the GOP’s health care sabotage and continue to hold Republicans accountable for their record, their awful record, on health care,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday.

The $150,000 campaign in Nevada is part of a broader $350,000 effort across a number of congressional districts. Not One Penny’s paid media efforts are projected to total more than $10 million by the end of the year.

Not One Penny is a coalition that includes Moveon.org and was formed to advocate against the GOP tax law.

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