Bill McClure spot slams CD 4 frontrunners as ‘career politicians’

A new 30-second television ad from Bill McClure, a Republican campaigning in Florida’s 4th Congressional District, maligns three of his opponents.

“The Washington insiders are hoping Florida sends another member to their exclusive club. They want Hans Tanzler, John Rutherford, or Lake Ray, career politicians that don’t care about Florida,” the ad, “Insider Party,” asserts.

McClure, a one-term member of the St. Johns County Commission who is notable for passive ownership of what the attorney general is investigating as a “pill mill” while in office, explained the ad in a press release from his campaign.

“Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the rest of the insider party would celebrate the election of one of my opponents to Congress,” said McClure. “As the political outsider in this race, I am the only candidate that will fight the ruling elite in Washington, work to defeat ISIS, and will never compromise our Second Amendment Rights.”

McClure refrains from addressing local issues in this ad, despite the implication he alone “care[s] about Florida.”

Instead, circulating the farrago that his opponents are “career politicians,” McClure hits big-picture tropes without giving any insight into how he would address them specifically.

McClure, who still serves on the St. Johns County Commission despite maintaining a residence with his new wife in Jacksonville’s swank Hidden Hills neighborhood, has not had a controversy-free tenure during his own “career” in politics.

Among the accusations fellow commission members have levied at him: recruiting candidates to run against sitting commissioners and allowing people to sit unattended in commission offices, which one female commissioner, Rachael Bennett, called “unconscionable,” as another former member, State Rep. Cyndi Stevenson, was compelled to lock the door to her office in fear for her personal safety.

McClure hopes this ad helps him get traction with the donor class.

It probably can’t hurt; he’s brought in $450 so far, running operations almost exclusively from a $100,000 personal loan.

Meanwhile, he got just 2 percent support in a recent University of North Florida poll, including just 2 percent in his home county.

See the ad below.