Long's new TV ad highlights health care

Fixing our health care system is personal to me. In Congress, I will fight to ensure no one goes through what my family and I did.

Southwest Washington needs a Representative who will protect, expand, and improve our health care — not one who works to take it away. pic.twitter.com/Zt9Roo4D0r

— Carolyn Long (@ElectLong) July 21, 2020

Carolyn Long released the first campaign commercial of Southwest Washington’s 2020 congressional election cycle this week, a 30-second ad spot highlighting her family’s past struggles with the health care system.

“The last time I saw my mom, I asked her to see a doctor, and two days later she had died. It was cancer,” Long says in her voiceover. “We didn’t know. She was more afraid of medical bills than her diagnosis.”

Long launched her second campaign a year ago, and her campaign’s messaging has stayed laser-focused on health care costs. The ad points to how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is leaving people in similarly vulnerable situations.

“We’re in a public health crisis, and so many are facing the same terrifying choices,” Long says in the ad. “Between corporate money and partisan politics, the politicians won’t fix this.”

Long, a Democrat, is challenging Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler in Washington’s Third Congressional District. Past messaging from the candidate — in both 2020 and during their first matchup in 2018 — hammered on the Republican congresswoman’s votes to roll back the Affordable Care Act.

Long’s campaign manager, Abby Olmstead, said as much in a media release accompanying the ad rollout.

“The current pandemic has only heightened the need for access to affordable health care immediately. The incumbent has taken $145,000 from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry, and bragged about voting to eliminate protections for those with pre-existing conditions,” Olmstead said. “Carolyn is committed to fighting to ensure no one else has to go through what she and her family did, and the first step is kicking Rep. Herrera Beutler out of office.”

Though it’s the first ad buy of the election, it’s unlikely to be the last. Long and Herrera Beutler are both raking in donations, and with neither able to host in-person campaign events right now, TV ads remain a handy, socially-distanced way to connect with voters.