Democrats launched a television ad Tuesday hitting Michigan Republican Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land for ties to the Koch brothers.
Koch Carbon, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, took heat last year when piles of pet coke, a byproduct of oil refining, produced large clouds of dark dust over Detroit.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's new ad points to the residual clouds and the "dark money" it says the Koch brothers have spent attacking Land's opponent, Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). Lynn and Peters are vying to replace retiring Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.).
"Their giant piles of illegally-stored pet coke threatened the health of Michigan residents, and now they're out to contaminate our elections," the narrator says. "Using their dirty profits to prop up Terri Lynn Land, they've already spent millions attacking Land's opponent, a cloud of dark money."
The ad will run statewide.
Watch the ad above.
Regan Page, a spokeswoman for the DSCC, said Land will "put the Kochs ahead of Michigan" if elected in November.
“Terri Lynn Land is on the side of the Koch brothers who are spending millions to buy her a Senate seat -- not Michigan,” Page said. “The same Koch brothers that spent millions propping up Terri Lynn Land illegally stored giant piles of pet coke that seriously threatened the health of Michiganders."
Peters acknowledged the Koch brothers' involvement in the race during a campaign rally in July, at which point the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity had already spent more than $5 million on television ads attacking Peters.
"I feel like l'm not really running against Terri Lynn Land. I feel like I'm running against the Koch brothers," Peters said at the time. "That's who I'm really running against here."
HuffPost Pollster, which aggregates all publicly available polling data, shows Peters ahead of Land with less than two months until the general election:
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