August 16, 2022 10:05 AM UTC

The Ad Joe O'Dea Oddly Wanted You To See Again

• 6 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Joe O’Dea blames 9NEWS for the mistake of airing their now off-message pre-primary ad:

Update: Campaign says TV station erred. “@9news made an innocent trafficking mistake. We love the ad and we know the station will make it right. No harm, no foul. Sorry Colorado’s small army of left wing Twitter trolls had to get out of bed before noon for nothing.”

— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) August 16, 2022

Sometimes the best irony is unplanned, we guess. Original post follows.

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The Twitters are alight this morning after what appears to be another unforced advertising error by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea’s campaign. No, they didn’t substitute Russian fighter jets in a spot praising the U.S. military again, but this one is ironically problematic for its own reasons:

Joe O’Dea, the R Senate nominee in Colorado running as a moderate, re-ran his first primary ad on TV this morning, per AdImpact. It calls him “conservative” 4x (clearly not their general election strategy) — and appears to have aired as an accident. pic.twitter.com/3qglBGYXh7

— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) August 16, 2022

Right down to the corrected fighter plane footage, this is Joe O’Dea’s ad from before the June 28th primary, when O’Dea was still earnestly working to prove his conservative bonafides to skeptical Republican primary voters. Since winning the primary, O’Dea has dropped the descriptor “conservative” like a bad habit in order to put daylight between himself and the toxic Republican brand–at least until the Inflation Reduction Act forced O’Dea to hew to Mitch McConnell’s party line.

Obviously running this ad again was a simple mistake, but it’s also a damaging reminder of the retreat O’Dea has had to make from his pre-primary image in order to have any chance with general election voters. In this way, the spending by Democrats to boost O’Dea’s opponent was successful in that O’Dea effectively lost control of own his message before the primary.

If this ad touting O’Dea’s “conservatism” had never been made, it wouldn’t be a problem for O’Dea now.