Alison Lundergan Grimes, a U.S. Senate candidate from Kentucky, will air her first television advertisement on Thursday, The Courier-Journal reported.
Grimes, a Democrat, is seeking the seat filled by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. She is currently the state's secretary of state.
The advertisement, which is 30 seconds long, focuses on veterans and their families -- a key constituent group, according to The Courier-Journal. It also emphasizes her effort to pass Senate Bill 1, which would have allowed troops overseas to vote over a secure Internet program. While the soldiers received their ballots online, they still had to send them in the mail.
The spot features Lynn Dickey, the mother of a veteran who was injured in Iraq.
"But what upset him most was his ballot being lost in battle," Dickey says in the ad. "Because of Alison, that will never happen again. Washington should work this way."
Grimes' attempt to work with both sides of the aisle is also included in the ad as an attempt to reach out to voters who are tired on partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill.
According to Jonathan Hurst, a Grimes adviser, the ad will air on broadcast and cable television in Kentucky. The commercial was produced by Putnam Partners LLC of Arlington, Virgina.
The Grimes campaign has already purchased air time for next week, The Courier-Journal said.
McConnell and Matt Bevin, two leading candidates for the GOP nomination, began airing advertisements last summer.
Both Republican candidates have been going head-to-head in the press, especially following allegations that Bevin supported cockfighting in the state, which is currently illegal, during a rally apperance.
"Matt Bevin's cockfighting episode will go down in history as one of the most disqualifying moments in Kentucky political history," Moore said in the statement. "Twenty years from now, we will all remember the time when the East Coast con-man thought so little of Kentuckians that he pathologically lied to us about absolutely everything until an undercover camera caught him red-handed at a cockfighting rally."
Following McConnell's accusations, the Bevin campaign released a statement, brushing off the incident as a "rehash of an old story."
"This is just a rehash of an old story," the statement read. "Primary voters will have a choice on May 20th between a veteran, small business owner, father of nine who will fight for our conservative values in Matt Bevin, or more of the same old liberal policies from Mitch McConnell. Since McConnell can't defend his record, all he can do is try to make his opponent look worse. Instead, we should be addressing the core issue - that the federal government has gotten too big, too intrusive, and needs to be reined in."
