NRA targets Lugar with negative ads

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - The National Rifle Association is weighing in on the Indiana Senate race, spending more than a hundred thousand dollars on Indiana television ads, and they are negative ads designed to defeat Sen. Richard Lugar.

The NRA said it will also distribute more than a million pieces of direct mail here and, a spokesman said, that's just for starters.

The NRA ads play up criticism of Lugar's voting record – saying he earned an F for that record. It's a record that gun owners frown upon. The NRA's chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, explained the motivation behind the ads by phone from Washington.

"He got that F rating the old-fashioned way," Cox said. "He earned it ... by voting for bans on millions of semi automatic firearms. He opposes right to carry."

The Conservative Club for Growth also hit Lugar with new negative ads today as the Lugar campaign began a new strategy of its own using voters in its ads in an effort to demonize his opponent, Richard Mourdock. One of them says of Mourdock: "If he were senator, heaven help us, cause Mourdock won't."

The reality is that Lugar has multiple opponents, all of them posing challenges from the right in a race unlike any in recent memory. For example, the NRA spending here is unprecedented in recent Senate primaries nationwide.

"I can't remember the last time (we spent this much),” said Cox, "and I've been in this position for 10 years."

Cox said the NRA has tens of thousands of members in Indiana.

All of this goes to point up how the Lugar/Mourdock race is a national battle for conservative groups.

Freedomworks, one of the Tea Party organizations that supports Mourdock, announced today that it is retreating from a challenge to Sen. Orrin Hatch in Utah. It will concentrate instead on the effort to defeat Richard Lugar.