Senate GOP launches first attack in Michigan Senate race

Senate Republicans' campaign arm is launching its first attack in Michigan’s Senate race, targeting Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin on pandemic relief spending, according to an ad shared first with NBC News.

Slotkin easily won her party’s primary Tuesday, setting up a race against GOP former Rep. Mike Rogers in November. And Republicans are wasting no time attacking Slotkin, who is in her third term, in a race that will be key to Senate control.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s independent expenditure ad, its first of the election cycle, kicks off a $10 million buy in the Michigan race.

The NRSC’s ad, which will run on TV, radio and digital platforms, targets Slotkin’s support for government spending during the coronavirus pandemic, criticizing her support for a measure that provided stimulus checks to millions of people, as well as prisoners.

The ad notes that stimulus check recipients included former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of committing sexual assaults against hundreds of girls and women on the national team and in Michigan, and convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

“Elissa Slotkin voted for wasteful spending that sent inflation through the roof and made life unaffordable for Michigan families,” NRSC spokeswoman Maggie Abboud said in a statement. “Larry Nassar and the Boston Marathon bomber benefitted from Slotkin’s policies — Michiganders got hosed.”

Federal judges did order Tsarnaev and Nassar to hand over their stimulus payments, as well as other funds in their accounts, to victims.

One Nation, the nonprofit arm of the GOP super PAC Senate Leadership Fund, also launching its first ad in the race as part of a $9.4 million buy that will run through Labor