The ad war has begun in Connecticut’s 5th Congressional District as the campaign for the state’s most competitive federal race ramps up heading into the fall.
Both candidates launched new television ads over the past week with the end of summer approaching and voters starting to turn their attention to campaigns down the ballot after the upheaval in the presidential race. So far, the dueling ads have stayed relatively positive and mainly focus on their biographies and priorities.
Republican challenger George Logan ran two ads last week that overlapped with the Democratic convention. And U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5th District, released the first TV ad of her campaign this week.
The ads focused on their own campaigns without mentioning their opponent. Instead, the two have largely sparred over social media, most recently over scheduling a 5th District debate. Logan said he has accepted several invitations for debates and forums and called on his opponent to debate him. Hayes said she accepted one and declined another a couple of weeks ago, noting the details of one are still in progress.
Hayes and Logan will face off in a high-stakes rematch in November with control of the U.S. House on the line again. Hayes bested Logan by a little over 2,000 votes in 2022, the closest race she has faced since her first election in 2018. Even with Logan’s defeat that year, Republicans were able to take back the House with a very narrow majority.
A Republican from Connecticut has not served in Congress in 15 years, but the party sees the race as one of its best chances to flip a seat in the state as well as the New England area. The last Republican to serve in the 5th District was Nancy Johnson, who lost reelection in 2006 to Chris Murphy, who is now a U.S. senator.
In the final two months of the race, candidates can get more bang for their buck when reserving ad times, with better rates offered to them than for outside groups like political action committees. Both campaigns have ramped up their fundraising in recent months, but Hayes had twice the amount of money in her campaign account compared to Logan at the end of the last fundraising quarter.
But national groups are likely to get more involved in the final months of the race, though it is unclear if it will reach the same levels of the last cycle. In 2022, the 5th District saw upwards of $12 million in spending between both parties and outside groups.
The National Republican Congressional Committee — House Republicans’ main campaign operation — reserved $1.3 million in the Hartford media market to run ads to help boost Logan. In mid-July, the NRCC ran an ad questioning Hayes’ support for President Joe Biden a couple of weeks before he ultimately dropped out of the race. For Democrats, the League of Conservation Voters made a smaller six-figure digital ad buy to benefit a number of Democratic candidates including Hayes.
But so far, the campaigns are taking the lead in defining themselves and reaching out to voters.
Logan: Compromise is not a dirty word
In the two ads that Logan’s campaign launched in the last week, he does not mention his opponent’s name, but instead seeks to draw a contrast with the Democratic Party as a whole. He vows to place compromise over partisanship in Congress.
The first TV spot of his 2024 campaign was a reprise of an ad he ran during his last campaign for the 5th District. It features him pulling objects out of a box labeled “typical Republican,” arguing that Democrats are trying to fit him into a certain box.
His other ad that ran during last week’s Democratic National Convention gives a nod to his family’s history. Logan is the son of Guatemalan immigrants who had roots in Jamaica. In past ads and videos, he has prominently featured his mother, Olga.
“Too many politicians think compromise is a dirty word,” Logan begins in the ad. Each time the former state senator mentions the word compromise in the 30-second spot, it is bleeped out. He believes the word has wrongly become taboo in Congress.
“I will never compromise my values, but we cannot be afraid to reach across the aisle to tackle the most pressing issues facing our communities,” Logan said in a statement. “Our campaign wanted to make the point to voters that we’re not afraid to talk to anyone, and we know the most important thing is delivering change for the hard-working people of Connecticut’s 5th Congressional District.”
Hayes’ husband in the spotlight
Hayes’ husband Milford kept a lower profile during her last run for office two years ago. He said at the time that “I usually just stand in the back and observe.”
He was briefly featured in her campaign ad a week before the 2022 election and gave remarks at an event on the eve of that race to rebuff Republican attacks about the congresswoman’s stance on law enforcement.
But the new ad released on Tuesday shows he is likely to play a more prominent and visible role going forward.
He narrated the ad that ticks through both of their careers: Milford who has served in law enforcement for more than two decades and the congresswoman who worked as a teacher in Waterbury and won National Teacher of the Year in 2016.
“We can relate. Our family has been through the same thing yours has,” Milford Hayes said in the ad, which will air on broadcast and cable TV as well as on digital platforms.
“This ad is personal to me,” Hayes said in a statement. “Milford and I have been public servants in the 5th District for decades, and we live, work, worship and raised our children here.”
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
