A major Democratic super-PAC is making a play for senior votes with its second ad in the Florida special election, featuring an elderly couple criticizing Republican David Jolly on Social Security.
{mosads}The ad from House Majority PAC shows Largo, Fla., retirees Elizabeth and Rod Snedeker highlighting reports Jolly lobbied for a group that wanted to privatize Social Security.
“David Jolly lobbied for a group that wanted to risk Social Security in the stock market. He still wants it on the table,” Rod Snedeker says.
Elizabeth Snedeker adds: “When the market crashed, we lost 40 percent of our savings. I don’t think it’s right for David Jolly to risk Social Security money in the stock market.”
The two speak to the camera over a soundtrack of Elizabeth Snedeker playing the piano.
It’s the super-PAC’s second ad on the Social Security issue, and it’s an attempt to sway senior voters — a crucial voting bloc in Florida’s 13th District, one of the oldest in the nation — in favor of Democrat Alex Sink.
But on Friday, Republicans pounced on comments Sink made to a local station on the healthcare law.
A recent nonpartisan report indicated the economy would lose the equivalent of 2.3 million workers by 2021 due to ObamaCare, but Democrats have argued that’s largely because workers won’t have to take dissatisfying or part-time jobs just to secure health insurance.
Sink characterized the report as good news and said the possible freedom it offers Americans is an “exciting prospect.”
“Over the years, particularly the past five, six years when we’ve been in this horrible economic environment, I’ve had so many people express to me, ‘Boy Alex, I’d love to start a business,’ or ‘I’d love to change jobs, but I can’t because I’ve got good health insurance at my workplace now. I’m stuck in a dead-end job, and I’m not very happy in, but I have to stay here,’ ” Sink said, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Republicans read the report as evidence ObamaCare amounts to just another entitlement program and an incentive not to work.
Both the National Republican Congressional Committee and an outside GOP group, American Action Network, blasted the comments, indicating they might end up in an attack ad in the coming weeks.
“Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark,” NRCC Communications Director Andrea Bozek said of the comments.