Elections
Cal Cunningham’s texts already the subject of a new digital ad from a GOP group
A Republican-aligned group will be running an ad about Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham’s romantic text messages to a California woman.
The group, Results for NC, will spend $50,000 to run the 15-second digital ad targeting independent voters in Charlotte, Raleigh and along the I-85 corridor, according to Dee Stewart, the group’s executive director.
The ad features an image of text messages on a cell phone along with pictures of Cunningham and former Democratic U.S. Sen. John Edwards, whose sex scandal abruptly derailed his political career in 2008.
Cunningham, who is married, sent the texts to Arlene Guzman Todd, a public relations strategist from California. The exchanges were first reported by the National File, a conservative web site.
Cunningham acknowledged the texts Friday night. It’s unclear whether his relationship with Todd goes beyond the texts.
“I have hurt my family, disappointed my friends, and am deeply sorry,” he said in a statement sent to The News & Observer.
But the GOP group draws its own conclusions.
“Dishonest. Unfaithful. Cal Cunningham’s betrayed our trust,” it says. “Leading a double life and taking advantage of someone else’s family. We can’t trust him. Just like John Edwards. And we don’t need another John Edwards in the Senate.”
Edwards covered up his long affair with Rielle Hunter, who eventually bore his child.
North Carolina’s Senate race between Cunningham and Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis is the country’s most expensive. The candidates and their respective allies have spent more than $229 million, according to Advertising Analytics. The race could determine which party controls the Senate.
“Sen. Tillis has made a centerpiece of his messaging that Cal Cunningham can’t be trusted to tell the truth on anything,” Stewart told the Observer. “(The ad) relates to the trustworthiness of Cal Cunningham.”
Results for NC is a so-called 527 group, named after the section of federal tax code under which it makes independent expenditures.
Stewart said it’s the latest incarnation of a group called Grow NC Strong. That was a super PAC started in 2014 to support Tillis’s campaign against then-Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. The group spent $663,000 in the 2014 Senate race.
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