YWCA Asks Rick Berg To Pull Ad

Update: It turns out the executive director of the Cass County YWCA is Heidi Heitkamp’s niece.

Yesterday we got news that liberal Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp bullied ND television stations into requesting an ad critical of her free-spending days as North Dakota’s Attorney General be pulled, alleging inaccuracies that, frankly, don’t really seem to exist.

Today comes news that the folks at the YWCA are asking Heitkamp’s opponent, Rick Berg, to pull an ad featuring a former director of the organization. Here’s the ad in question, which contains a disclaimer noting that this is personal testimonial and does not represent the views of the YWCA as an organization.

Was the YWCA’s request politically motivated? There are a number of reasons to think so.

First, the YWCA didn’t contact the Berg campaign privately to take down the ad. Instead they issued a press release demanding it, seemingly coordinated with a press release from the state Democrat party blasting Berg for supposedly anti-women votes in Congress (see this updated article from the Grand Forks Herald).

Second, attacking Republican ads this week seems to be a theme for the Democrats given the earlier attack on the Crossroads ad.

Third, the Heitkamp campaign has made an issue out of suggesting that Rick Berg “attacks women”, including running web ads making that claim. Obviously, news that Berg was instrumental in helping out an organization like the YWCA is sort of inconvenient for that narrative, thus the swift move (I believe) by the Democrats to silence it.

I’m sure the Berg campaign will pull the ad because they aren’t going to make their campaign about this issue, but I really don’t see where the YWCA has any standing to ask for the ad to be pulled given the disclaimers. Whether they want to admit it or not, Berg helped them out in the past, and they really can’t expect to silence their former members.