Voters, a liberal group which generally supports veterans who present themselves to its functions, pays a million dollars in aggressive advertising campaigns supporting democratic candidates in Virginia and the New Jersey Gubernatorial with less than 30 days until the day of the ballot.
Representative Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic candidate for the governor of New Jersey, is a former naval helicopter pilot. The Abigail Spanberger representative, the Democratic candidate for the same job in Virginia, was a CIA operations manager before entering politics.
The advertising campaigns of $ 500,000 is directly obtained from the republican candidate for the governor of New Jersey, Jack Ciattarelli, and the GOP candidate in Virginia, WinSome Earle-Sears. The voters indicate that the two advertisements featured armed veterans of armed services discussing economic difficulties and alleging that a governor of the GOP would aggravate things for them.
“After a decade of rescues from the Coast Guard, I went home to go. But Jersey is so expensive right now,” said a veteran of the Coast Guard in the announcement of New Jersey. “And Jack Ciattarelli will get worse. He has already voted to increase property taxes and even spoke of a 10%sales tax.”
Ciattarelli rejected the allegations according to which he supports the increase in the 10%state sales tax, a complaint also made in the announcements paid by the campaign of his Democratic opponent. He says his comments have been released from their context.
“Mikie Sherrill and her allies lie on Jack,” said a spokesperson for Ciattarelli in a statement. “As a governor, he has a plan to reduce taxes for new middle -class jerseyans and middle class, while Mikie Sherrill has a history of voting to increase taxes in Congress.”
In Virginia’s announcement, a navy veteran tries to connect the Earles to President Trump’s economic policies, although it was not approved by the president.
“Instead of fighting for Virginia, WinSome Earle-Seals went directly to the Trump budget that increases our even higher costs,” said the veteran in the ad. “Health care. Housing. Electricity. And these prices, raising prices on almost everything else.”
CBS News contacted the campaigns of Ciattarelli and Earle-Sears to comment and update this story if they react.
The voters placed a separate advertising campaign of half a million dollars supporting Spanberger in August, and the group’s political action committee directly invested $ 500,000 in its campaign earlier in the cycle.
Voters also transferred nearly $ 80,000 to the New Jersey Democratic Party and launched an ADM of $ 100,000 in the 64th State House District competition in Virginia.
Virginia and New Jersey are two of the only states to organize elections across the state one year after the presidential race, so that their governor competitions are generally monitored – and are often treated as referendums on the newly elected president.
The two races have warmed considerably in recent weeks, with news threatening to upset the competitions.
In New Jersey, legal threats Linger during the competition after CBS News reported that a branch of the National Archives admitted that it has published a mainly expelled version of Sherrill’s military files in an ally of Ciattarelli, including its social security number and other private information. Sherrill alleged that his files had been intentionally published, which Ciatarelli’s campaign denied. Sherrill also faced attacks from the right seeking to link it to the cheating scandal of the 1994 Naval Academy – she was not accused of cheating, and she says that her only involvement was her failure to inform her classmates.
Meanwhile, in Virginia, Spanberger faced attacks after the candidate of the Democratic Attorney General Jay Jones admitted He sent SMS in 2022 which contained a violent and inflammatory language on several Republicans.
Spanberger condemned Jones’s violent rhetoric, but has faced criticism of the right not to call her to abandon the race. The Earle-Sears campaign also published an announcement connecting Spanberger to Jones.
