DCCC on the air for Dahlkemper

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is out with its first television advertisement of the cycle targeting U.S. Rep. Phil English (R-Erie).

The 30-second spot, which began airing Friday, accuses English of accepting $180,000 from oil and gas interests, voting on four separate occasions with big oil, and supporting $2.6 billion in tax breaks for oil companies.

The ad, produced by McMahon, Squier, Lapp and Associates, is running on cable stations in the northwest Pennsylvania-area district. The buy totals $28,000.

Republicans were quick to fire back against the spot.

“What Kathy Dahlkemper and the DCCC don’t want Pennsylvania voters to know is that she has endorsed the Washington Democrats’ do-nothing strategy of opposing drilling to lower the cost of gasoline as her own," said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee."Voters are quickly finding out that there is a stark contrast in this campaign between the pro-growth agenda of Phil English and the tax-and-spend, drilling nothing policies of Kathy Dahlkemper.”

English, a seven-term congressman, is widely seen as the favorite to retain his seat. But Democrats insist that the Republican is vulnerable, saying that the district is increasingly trending Democratic. They point to new voter registration figures in the district showing Democrats outnumbering Republican 48 percent to 42 percent. Democrats also argue that English’s margins of victory in the past three cycles and have been steadily declining.

Democrats got a boost last week when Independent candidate Steven Porter was taken off the ballot after a judge ruled that 1,500 of his signatures were invalid. Porter, who faced off against English in 2006 as a Democrat, threatened to pull votes from Democrat Kathy Dahlkemper.

Later this month, Dahlkemper, the Lake Erie Arboretum director, will be the beneficiary of a Washington, D.C., fundraiser hosted by U.S. Reps. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.).