Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here. Leading Off: ' ND-Sen: Busted! On Thursday, Democrat Heidi Heitkamp sent a takedown letter (PDF) to local television stations, asking them to stop airing the new Crossroads GPS ad attacking her on the grounds that it contains false information. (Remember, TV stations are required to air all candidate ads and are immune from lawsuits regarding them, but they can be held liable for defamation when it comes to third-party ads.) Heitkamp had Crossroads dead to rights: The spot accuses her of spending "taxpayer dollars to buy private planes." But as her letter points out, the planes in questions were provided by the federal government for free. Nor were they "private": The planes were transferred from the Defense Dept. to the state AG's office and were used for official purposes only'namely, drug dealer surveillance.
So, what happened? Later that very same day, Crossroads yanked the ad'presumably to replace it with a re-cut version as quickly as possible. Rather stupidly, the group also blatantly lied about what prompted them to pull the spot, claiming they weren't motivated by Heitkamp's complaints (oh no, of course not). But thanks to Politico's Maggie Haberman, Crossroads got busted for the second time in a single day. A local TV station official confirmed that she heard from Heitkamp's people'and then informed Crossroads'long before the ad actually got nuked. Suckas.
P.S. On the Dem side of the independent expenditure world, the Majority PAC is putting in another $106K on TV ads to attack GOP Rep. Rick Berg. That's much bigger than their usual buys here, which have previously topped out at $67K apiece. I'm not sure whether this is a re-up or for a new spot, but Maj PAC usually lists production costs separately and I'm not seeing any of those in this report, so I'd guess the former. All told, the group has now spent some $617K on airing commercials in this race.
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