Demonstrating his massive money advantage in the race to fill Congresswoman Candice Miller’s seat, Republican candidate Paul Mitchell of Lapeer County has already launched his second TV ad with nearly two months to go before the August primary election.
Trying to gain separation in a five-man GOP field for the 10th District prize, this time Mitchell portrays himself as the product of a blue-collar background, son of an assembly line worker in a truck factory and the first from his family to attend college.
The 30-second ad, featuring gritty images and blues music, proclaims: “Paul Mitchell is Michigan tough, so Washington — get out of his way.”
As with the first ad released last month, the campaign said that this spot will run on Facebook and locally on cable and broadcast TV.
A multi-millionaire, Mitchell has offered little evidence that his adult background consisted of anything other than a career as a white-collar guy. Mitchell’s first ad, released in May and labeling him as the “conservative outsider” facing career politicians and political insiders, riled his opponents.
“He got one thing right, he’s definitely an outsider – he came from Saginaw to run for an open seat in an opportunistic way,” state Sen. Phil Pavlov, R-St. Clair, said. Pavlov made those remarks after Mitchell declined to attend a candidate debate before a Macomb County business organization.
“… If you look back at the number of times he has run for something, he’s an outsider because he hasn’t won.”
The only other candidate in the race to run a series of video ads is state Rep. Anthony Forlini, R-Harrison Township, who has limited his advertising campaign to Facebook. But Forlini made a potentially significant error in his second commercial when he referred to his efforts to keep military aircraft flying at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township.
The ad features footage of F-16 fighter planes, which were transferred out of Selfridge by the Pentagon nearly eight years ago.
The five candidates are battling in a diverse 10th District that stretches from industrial areas of Sterling Heights, through northern Macomb County’s upscale subdivisions, and along Lake St. Clair, the St. Clair River and Lake Huron to the tip of the Thumb Area. In this solidly Republican district, former Democratic state representative Frank Accavitti of Grosse Pointe Shores awaits the winner of the primary for a general election faceoff.
State Sen. Phil Pavlov, center, has received the endorsement of Sen. Jack Brandenburg, right.
GOP state Sen. Jack Brandenburg of Harrison Township, the 10th District leader in an early poll by Inside Michigan Politics, decided not to run. Brandenburg had hinted that he would support Pavlov and this week he made it official. That could be a blow to Forlini, who is practically Brandenburg’s neighbor, and to another prominent Macomb County candidate, former state senator Alan Sanborn of Richmond Township. A fifth candidate, David VanAssche from Macomb’s Shelby Township, does not seem to be waging a high-profile campaign.
Mitchell, perceived by many political observers as the frontrunner, has yet to address his Achilles heel – his status, denounced by critics, as a “carpetbagger” in the 10th District.
After losing the August 2014 primary election to now-Congressman John Moolenaar in mid-Michigan’s 4th Congressional District Mitchell moved to Lapeer County in the 10th District last summer. At one point in 2013, he had filed to run for a state Senate seat in northern Michigan but dropped out a year before the ’14 election. He was elected to the St. Clair City Council in 2007 but quit just a few months after taking office.
You can view the Mitchell ad here.
Here is the transcript of the 30-second spot:
Tough times don’t last… tough people do.
Here at this plant… Paul Mitchell’s father built trucks on the line…
The first in his family to graduate from college…
Mitchell worked his way up… and built a successful workforce training company.
A hard charging businessman, Mitchell faced down taxes and regulations… and created jobs.
Paul Mitchell is Michigan tough…
So Washington… get out of his way.
Conservative Paul Mitchell, for Congress.
A blue-collar guy who has a multi-million dollar home near Bay Harbor, has ran for multiple political offices and carpetbagged into districts to be eligible, and who was the fundraising chairman for the GOP. Come on. What a load of Stu Sandler garbage. Oh yeah, Mitchell’s wife is about 30 years his junior. I think his kids from his earlier wife are older than his current wife.