Barnes campaign releases ad highlighting Johnson’s connection to Jan. 6

Democrat Mandela Barnes’s campaign released an ad on Thursday that highlights Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, arguing that the Republican senator “can’t be trusted.”

Johnson — who is running for reelection in Wisconsin against Barnes, the state’s lieutenant governor — came under fire in June when the House select committee probing the Capitol riot revealed that a member of his staff texted a staffer for then-Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, saying that the senator wanted to hand off fake elector votes from Michigan and Wisconsin to the vice president.

In a 30-second ad first shared with The Hill, the Barnes campaign strings together clips from news reports that bring attention to Johnson’s association with Jan. 6.

“Shocking evidence that implicated Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin in Donald Trump’s coup plot,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says in a clip from his June show displayed in the ad.

The video also features audio of Johnson in August saying his “involvement lasted seconds.”

That month, he told WISN, “I had nothing to do with the alternate slate. I had no idea anybody was going to ask me to deliver those. My involvement in that attempt to deliver spanned the course of a couple seconds.”

In the aftermath of the bombshell hearing, the Wisconsin Republican would not say if he authorized his staffer to give Pence the fake slates of electors, if he knew what was in the folder his aide wanted to hand off to the vice president or if he knew about his staffer’s plans in advance.

“Ron Johnson can’t be trusted,” the ad concludes.

The 30-second spot, which is being launched on digital, is part of the Barnes campaign’s multimillion-dollar digital and television ad campaign. The ad was released the same day the Jan. 6 select committee is slated to hold its ninth, and possibly final, public hearing.

With just under one month to go until Election Day in Wisconsin, Johnson is slightly ahead of Barnes in FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls, 49.5 percent to 46.7 percent.

Johnson — who has become embroiled in controversies for comments made regarding Social Security and Medicare, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Capitol riot — is vying for his third term representing the Badger State in the Senate. He is working to stave off a challenge from Barnes, the first African American to serve as Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor.

If Barnes wins, he would be the first Black senator from Wisconsin.

The two candidates went head-to-head on the debate stage last week for the first of two scheduled debates in the Wisconsin Senate race. They covered a range of topics, including crime, Social Security, abortion and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, among others.

Johnson sought to pin Barnes to the “defund the police” movement, while Barnes criticized Johnson for praising the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe. v Wade.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the seat a “toss up.”