House Majority PAC cancels ads for Comstock race

House Majority PAC, the largest outside group backing Democrats, canceled an $800,000 ad buy in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, represented by Rep. Barbara Comstock (R), in a sign that Democrats are increasingly confident they will flip the seat.

“House Majority PAC cancelled their entire broadcast flight in #VA10, more than 800K, for 10/30-11/5 which brings their total to $354K,” Advertising Analytics, a Virginia-based firm that tracks political media, tweeted Tuesday.

House Majority PAC cancelled their entire broadcast flight in #VA10, more than 800K, for 10/30-11/5 which brings their total to $354K.#VA10 is a Lean Democratic Race as per Cook.

— Advertising Analytics (@Ad_Analytics) October 30, 2018

House Majority PAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Comstock has trailed her Democratic challenger state Senator Jennifer Wexton in several polls. Nonpartisan elections forecaster, The Cook Political Report, rates the race as “Lean Democratic,” and an average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics has Wexton up by 9 percentage points. 

{mosads}Comstock, who has held the seat since 2014, is running in a district that Hillary Clinton carried by 10 points in 2016.

Comstock has tried to distance herself from President Trump, who remains unpopular in the largely suburban district. Republicans fear that Trump’s rhetoric, particularly about women, will alienate the widely sought after demographic of college-educated, suburban women in districts just like Comstock’s.

Wexton has unleashed a barrage of ads linking the congresswoman to the president, including one that calls her “Barbara Trump-stock.”

Comstock broke with Trump and her party on repealing ObamaCare last year and she personally urged the president during a televised White House meeting not to shut down the government over immigration.

“I’m my own woman,” Comstock told CNN in a recent interview. “And I’ve worked with a Republican governor and now a Democrat governor, a Democrat president and now a Republican president.”

Democrats hope that Virginia’s 10th Congressional District will be one of the 23 needed to flip the lower chamber.