I can’t say for TV but the Republican State Leadership Committee’s ads in support of local VTGOP candidates are being run in heavy rotation on Vermont radio this weekend – and, they are … everywhere!!! 

The RSLC is a national conservative political action committee (founded and advised by Karl Rove and funded with donations from Koch Industries) dedicated to electing state level conservative GOP legislators. Their national big business funded ads, with no intended irony, are attempting to rally Vermonters around a banner for local control.

This spring they pledged $50,000 to target 22 Democratic Vermont legislators for defeat. In the 2014 election when all was said and done the RSLC ended up spending over $300.000.

A funny thing in the latest ad blitz is that three Democrats – Rep. Cynthia Browning (D-Arlington) and two NEK state senators, Bobby Starr and John Rodgers (D-Essex-Orleans) – who have been reliably friendly to VTGOP causes are on the RSLC’s hit list.

The American Conservative Union recently proclaimed the Vermont legislature had a “a small pocket of conservatism” and went so far as to give Democratic State Senators John Rogers, Bobby Starr and House Rep. Cynthia Browning’s 2015 voting records  a big conservative thumbs-up. Rep. Cynthia Browning’s voting record got a perfect 100% from the ACU. And NEK Senators Rogers and Starr came in at 43%, still respectably above the lowest rated VTGOP Senator, Diane Snelling at 29%.[corrected]

While collateral damage to three highly ACU-rated Democratic friendlies, if any, won’t show up until the votes are counted on November 8, the RSLC-funded ad war is keeping a lot of radio stations happily selling ad time.

And you know – as Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers want us to believe – nothing says local control more than big businesses’ national super-PAC ads bombarding Vermont.