GOP candidates are countering the 'war on women' in a new round of ads. | AP Photos, Getty GOP mantra: No to domestic violence

Republicans face a gender gap in November’s midterms that Democrats are trying to widen with claims of a GOP “war on women.” So in recent days, several Republican candidates have countered by releasing ads on a topic generating headlines thanks to the Ray Rice scandal: domestic violence.

The spots, which often feature heart-wrenching testimonials of female victims, are among the most memorable of the cycle.


“My ex-husband beat me with a baseball bat, threw me in a garbage can filled with snow and left me in a frozen storage locker to die,” Teri Jendusa-Nicolai says to the camera in an ad on behalf of the Republican governor of Wisconsin. “At that time, I was pregnant, and I lost the child I was carrying. But I fought to stay alive for my other two children, and today I am fighting for Scott Walker.”

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Democrats also have discussed domestic violence — and violence against women more broadly — in several recent ads. But the subject is especially sensitive for the GOP. The party, eager to win the Senate this year, is trailing by double digits among women in some races amid Democrats’ focus on topics such as abortion and personhood legislation.

Republican candidates’ gender-related gaffes in 2012 cost the party key Senate races in Missouri and Indiana. And last year, Democrats won the Virginia governor’s race in part by accusing Ken Cuccinelli of wanting to dramatically restrict women’s rights while the Republican’s team — to the astonishment of GOP operatives — offered virtually no response.

Many of the latest ads have aired in the wake of fallout over the National Football League’s handling of Rice, the Baltimore Ravens star who was suspended after video emerged showing him punching out his now-wife. Several have been unveiled in October, designated National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and come on the heels of last month’s 20th anniversary of the passage of the original Violence Against Women Act.

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Operatives on the right say they mistakenly believed in the past that voters would never buy the suggestion that Republicans condone sexual assault or the unfair treatment of women in the workplace. But as the narrative that the GOP is anti-woman seemed to stick, officials at the National Republican Senatorial Committee promised this year would be different.

They’ve urged GOP candidates to be proactive in showing their support for women and quickly respond to claims otherwise.

“Democrats across the country — mostly men, by the way — have sunk to new lows, exploiting deeply personal issues and crimes, ranging from birth control to sexual assault, domestic violence to discrimination in the workforce for their own political gain,” NRSC spokeswoman Brook Hougesen said.

Democrats say the GOP is trying to muddle an issue on which there is a clear contrast between the parties.

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They point in particular to resistance among some Republicans to reauthorize VAWA, which was renewed in 2013 with added protections for gays and Native Americans after lengthy haggling between the House and Senate. The act covers domestic violence and other forms of danger to women.

“The Ray Rice incident elevated domestic violence in the public debate again, and there’s no question that voters want strong laws to prevent abuse and help women, not partisanship,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman Emily Bittner said. “Pointing to Republicans’ 500-day ideological obstruction against the Violence Against Women Act is effective shorthand for the many, many ways that they’re far outside the mainstream.”

In the Massachusetts governor’s race, Democratic candidate Martha Coakley pounced after Republican opponent Charlie Baker did not demand the resignation of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell over the Rice case. Baker had told reporters two week ago that he didn’t know what position to take but that he “would like to see more data and more information.”

Coakley, in a rapid-response web video, said: “I know I don’t need more data to make a decision. … Anyone who understands this issue, who has worked with victims and survivors as I had, who pays attention or hears the voices of women who have been abused, I don’t think it’s a hard call.”

Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor unveiled two separate commercials this week that highlight Republican Rep. Tom Cotton’s vote against the final version of VAWA and a Republican alternative bill that passed the House but not the Senate.

In one, the director of an emergency women’s shelter, Paulette Hill, says: “We’ve got to do something to break this cycle of violence, and Tom Cotton isn’t doing anything to help.”

The DCCC is even appealing to Latinos by running a Spanish-language radio ad to support Julia Brownley in California’s 26th District that attacks Republican Jeff Gorell — currently a state assemblyman, not a congressman — for “refusing to support the Violence Against Women Act.”

And some Democratic candidates, like Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, are touching on the topic of women and violence in positive ads that make no mention of their opponents.

In the Franken ad, which was released this past week, women’s advocate Marcia Avner discusses how many rape victims had to pay for the process of collecting evidence from their bodies — the rape kit. “It was Sen. Al Franken who got this practice outlawed,” she says.

Some Republicans have tried to get ahead of the issue.

As early as May, Montana GOP Senate candidate Steve Daines ran a testimonial ad highlighting his vote for final passage of VAWA. The unusual, one-minute ad featured Rebekah Uzenski talking about how her ex-husband would beat and choke her and lock her in bathrooms.

“I am so thankful that there’s men like Steve out there that actually stand up for women’s rights and what’s right,” she said.

New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown just rotated back on the air an ad he first ran in June that features his sister, LeeAnn Riley. In it, Riley talks about the physical abuse in their home growing up and says that her brother was “there to protect myself and my mom.”

And in Colorado, a female narrator notes in an ad that began airing late last month that House incumbent Mike Coffman “was praised for protecting women from violence [and] finding solutions.”

In several other races, Republicans have challenged Democrats’ accusations.

For instance, Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat, has gone after GOP opponent Dan Sullivan for letting subordinates give out lenient plea deals to sex offenders when he was the state’s attorney general. Sullivan responded Thursday with a commercial featuring a woman named Jamilla George, who worked with him when he was Alaska’s AG.

“I know firsthand how committed Dan Sullivan is to protecting Alaskan women from domestic violence,” she says. “Because of Dan’s work, offenders got longer prison sentences and abused women are getting the legal representation they need to restart their lives.”

Hougesen of the NRSC said Democratic candidates “have shown no shame,” pointing out that the original Begich ad that Sullivan is responding to was pulled off the air at the request of a victim’s family.

After Kentucky Democratic candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes attacked Republican Mitch McConnell in July on not doing more to oppose violence against women, the Senate minority leader shot back with a response ad that featured his wife, Elaine Chao.

“Mitch McConnell co-sponsored the original Violence Against Women Act — he’s always supported its purpose,” a narrator says.

Republicans who opposed the updated version of the measure said it went too far in subverting due process rights for non-Native American men charged with abuse on tribal lands. But outside women’s groups say some of those Republicans are showing an election-year conversion on VAWA because they see how politically damaging their previous votes were.

“Women voters have always known this is an incredibly important issue, and recent headlines only reaffirm that,” said Marcy Stech of EMILY’s List.

Florida Rep. Steve Southerland is one of the most endangered Republicans up for reelection; he faces Gwen Graham, the daughter of former Sen. Bob Graham. Southerland supported the House’s initial straight reauthorization of VAWA. But he voted against the expanded version that came back later after Senate Democrats insisted on adding protections for gays, Native Americans and undocumented immigrants.

Obviously expecting Democratic attacks, Southerland began running a spot this summer that stars a woman named Erica Price, who identifies herself as a survivor of “a very violent domestic act” at 17.

“Our congressman, Steve, is advocating for things like [the] Violence Against Women Act,” she says. “I know that justice does not always prevail without the right advocates, and to me Steve is an advocate.”

But Graham got her response ad up within 24 hours. Southerland, a narrator says, is “saying one thing in TV ads, doing the opposite in Congress.”