WMUR
By John DiStaso
July 16, 2020

NEW AD FOCUSES ON ROLE IN DEVELOPING PPP. For this second time this week, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s reelection campaign is launching a new television ad – this one focusing on her work in helping to negotiate the Paycheck Protection Program earlier this year.

The 30-second spot features several small business owners and a worker praising Shaheen for her leading role, along with three other senators, to hammer out the program.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, as of last week, the PPP had distributed $521 billion in 4.9 million forgivable loans to businesses nationally, including $2.5 billion loaned to more than 23,011 New Hampshire businesses.

The Shaheen campaign said the program is “allowing more than 209,000 Granite Staters to keep their jobs.”

The campaign said the ad will begin airing Friday on WMUR-TV and cable television. It said the ad will run along with the campaign’s first ad, released Monday, which focuses on Shaheen’s efforts to deliver federal funds to fight the opioid crisis.

View the new ad here and at the end of this report.

In the new ad, Nicole Carrier of the Throwback Brewery in North Hampton says, “When COVID hit, it was basically like a nuclear bomb.”

Dan Chartrand of the Water Street Bookstore in Exeter says, “Senator Shaheen understood what small businesses need.”

A narrator says she “helped lead the bipartisan group that negotiated small business funding and coronavirus relief. 23,000 New Hampshire businesses received $2.5 billion.”

Yahaira Infante, an employee of W.H. Bagshaw of Nashua, says, “It was a big deal for us to stay working.”

“The PPP – it saved my business,” says Tom Boucher of T-Bones, the Copper Door and Cactus Jack’s, who identifies himself as a Republican and adds that he is supporting Shaheen “because she was there for us.”

Shoshanna Kelly, owner of Kelly Creative and a member of the Nashua Board of Aldermen, says the program saved her business and kept her employees working.

The campaign said Shaheen was one of four Senate negotiators who “created” the PPP as part of a $2 trillion CARES Act, a COVID-19 relief package enacted in March. It said she has since been calling additional transparency of the recipients of PPP loans.

“Shaheen has been praised by senators in both parties for working across the aisle and negotiating a small business package that has made a difference for communities across the country, and she continues to push for additional resources for small businesses to ensure they can stay afloat,” the campaign said.

“When the pandemic hit the U.S. economy, Jeanne Shaheen got to work negotiating a small business package that would make a difference for the tens of thousands of New Hampshire small businesses that were affected,” said campaign manager Harrell Kirstein. “Thanks to her bipartisan leadership, more than 23,000 New Hampshire businesses were able to stay open and keep more than 209,000 employees paid during one of the worst economic downturns in our nation’s history.

“Jeanne Shaheen knows that small businesses are the lifeblood of New Hampshire’s economy, and Granite Staters know she will continue to work across the aisle to ensure that they have the resources they need to get through this.”

The campaign did not release the total amount it is spending to air the ad on cable and broadcast television stations.

But on Monday, the campaign disclosed it will spend $85,650 on 137 spots on WMUR-TV over the next two weeks, according to public documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission.

The campaign on Wednesday pre-booked an additional 284 spots on WMUR-TV through Aug. 3, totaling $150,300, also according to public filings with the FCC.

Shaheen is facing lesser-known Democratic opponents Tom Alciere and Paul J. Krautmann in the Sept. 8 primary, while on the Republican side, attorney Corky Messner and retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc are seeking their party’s nomination along with Andy Martin and Gerard Beloin.

Messner has also aired two ads so far in the campaign

The general election is Nov. 3.