Christopher Shays On The Air With First Ad Of 2012 Campaign

Less than four weeks before the Aug. 14 Republican primary, Christopher Shays will begin running his first television ad of the 2012 election cycle.

“We have bought every available ad space on Fox News channel,” Shays spokeswoman Amanda Bergen said. “That’s where were focusing right now.”

Shays’ Republican opponent, wealthy former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, has been on TV for months.

But Shays’ cash-strapped campaign wasn’t able to afford commercials, a fact Shays himself acknowledged after a debate at the University of Connecticut in June.

That changed in recent weeks. “We have some supporters who felt very strongly they wanted us to be up on the air,” Bergen said.

The ad, which will begin running tomorrow and will continue until the primary, will air exclusively on Fox News because that’s the channel greater numbers of Republican primary voters are likely to tune to, Bergen said. “It’s never been our intent to try and compete with her money. We’re using our resources more strategically.”

The ad is a positive one, Bergen said. It features Shays’ wife, Betsi Shays, touting her husband’s “experience and passion and his energy and ability to get the job done,” Bergen said.

It does not mention McMahon by name but does highlight Shays’ experience.

Meanwhile, McMahon has a new ad out as well. Like an earlier commercial, the 30-second spot highlights the financial struggles she and husband Vince McMahon endured early in their marriage, before the business that became WWE found success.

McMahon frequently discusses her bankruptcy with voters but her campaign has not made the records public (the campaign has said McMahon does not have a copy.)

However, some details of that chapter in her life are contained in public documents in the municipal vault in West Hartford town hall, including the home foreclosure papers, mortgage documents from a Waterbury bank, and paperwork relating to a loan from a man charged years earlier with loan-sharking.