Michigan Republican Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra is in hot water today following a commercial he aired during the Super Bowl which some are calling culturally insensitive and even racially offensive.
The ad, “Now,” features an Asian woman who is ostensibly Chinese, speaking in broken English and offering faint praise to incumbent Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow (who the Chinese woman refers to as Debbie “spend-it-now” … get it?) for authorizing accepting government loans from China to fund out of control spending proposals.
The ad has met with universal derision from progressives and liberal-leaning advocacy groups, as identified in this roundup of the criticism from the Huffington Post’s Kathy Barks Hoffman. Hoekstra’s social media accounts were bombarded on Sunday night by enraged critics who found the ad to be racially provocative.
Stabenow, who is running for her third term in the Senate, faces an uphill battle for reelection. In 2010, Republican’s took over Michigan’s House and Senate and voters sent Republican Rick Snyder to the governor’s mansion. Stabenow has an average approval / disapproval of 52 percent to 40 percent (h/t TPM PollTracker), with a trend-line that should be disturbing for the Great Lake State’s Democrats.
Polls of Michigan’s electorate are few and far between – the last poll showed Stabenow beating Hoekstra with 48 to 42 percent, but polls from earlier in 2011 show Stabenow well below the 50 percent threshold (besides those coming from Public Policy Polling’s North Carolina offices). There is a long way to go before the election, and missteps like this do not help Hoekstra’s campaign.
Stabenow would be well advised to keep controversies like this alive – her only hope of reelection (besides trading off President Obama’s possible coattails) is to make Hoekstra an unpalatable candidate. This ad goes a long way towards advancing such a narrative.
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