Democrats hope their attacks, at their most powerful, will have the impact of one of the most memorable ads of 2012, an anti-Romney one in which a worker in Indiana described how he had built a stage for his company after it was acquired by Bain Capital. The stage, he would later learn, was for announcing the closing of his plant. He said it had been like building his own coffin.
Democrats have also been critical of the Kochs with a second line of attack, one with particular resonance in Alaska: accusing them of being outsiders from the lower 48 states meddling in local affairs. An early misstep by Americans for Prosperity gave the Begich campaign an opening to try to discredit the Kochs as interloping mudslingers, criticisms it has increased lately.
In a commercial for the Koch-backed group that aired late last year, an actress standing in a high-end, French country-style kitchen slams Mr. Begich as not listening to Alaskans.
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