Mitch Perry
As we reported during the weekend, Pinellas County U.S. Rep. David Jolly was one of just 17 House Republicans to vote against his own party’s budget last week. Now the campaign organization dedicated to helping him lose next year is going after a part of that vote that referenced college accessibility.
This week the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is targeting Jolly and 14 other House Republicans in college campus newspapers, attacking them for not supporting Pell Grants, which provide funding for low-income students working toward undergraduate degrees. A DCCC spokesperson told Florida Politics the ad will be running in the USF Tampa campus paper The Oracle. There are no plans to run it in The Crow’s Nest (the USFSP paper) at this time.
“The Republicans made a clear statement of their priorities by casting votes that would make it more expensive for young people to attend college — priorities that stand in stark contrast to Democrats,” said Ben Ray Luján, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “We will be using the first week of Congress’s April recess to remind voters just how out of touch Republicans are on college affordability.”
“Only in Washington is voting against your own party’s budget get you attacked from the other side,” laughed Jolly when responding to the story. “This really is creative politicking by a bunch of professional hacks in Washington D.C. in my opinion,” he added.
Jolly says in fact that he fully support Pell Grants, and is open to a conversation on expanding them.
“I don’t worry about it as anything more just the noise that it is,” he says of the DCCC attack. “But the fact is it’s dishonest and disengenous and basically what you would expect from a political party sitting in Washington D.C. that’s never been in Pinellas County.”
Jolly isn’t the only Florida Republican being targeted in the ad campaign. Ads against South Florida Republican Carlos Curbelo are appearing in the campus newspapers of the University of Miami and Florida International University.
Here’s the complete list:
· University of South Florida: U.S. Rep. David Jolly (FL-13)
· University of Miami, Florida International University: U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo (FL-26)
· University of Northern Iowa: U.S. Rep. Rod Blum (IA-01)
· Iowa State University: U.S. Rep. David Young (IA-03)
· Southern Illinois University: U.S. Rep. Mike Bost (IL-12)
· University of Maine: U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin (ME-02)
· University of Minnesota Twin Cities: U.S. Rep. John Kline (MN-02)
· University of New Hampshire: U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta (NH-01)
· University of Nevada Las Vegas: U.S. Rep. Joe Heck (NV-03), U.S. Rep. Cresent Hardy (NV-04)
· Stony Brook University: U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (NY-01)
· Syracuse University: U.S. Rep. John Katko (NY-24)
· Temple University, Lincoln University: U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello (PA-06)
· George Mason University: U.S. Rep. Barbara Comstock (VA-10)
