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For Sean Duffy, the campaign never ended. The votes were tallied months ago, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign is still buying ads attacking the freshman Congressman from northern Wisconsin. Duffy is gearing up to fight back, recently citing Politico’s declaration that he was “the guy Dems love to hate” as a fundraising plea for his 2012 campaign.

Duffy – a former Ashland County district attorney, reality TV star, champion lumberjack – attracted early fascination from the press and a wary glance from national Democratic strategists that later became a piercing stare. Last fall, when the DCCC, a major fundraising clearinghouse for the national Democratic Party, began purchasing TV ads in congressional races, the first buy was in Wisconsin. The spot accused Duffy of wanting to privatize Social Security. (Duffy has denied ever supporting privatizing Social Security.)

sean duffy (official photo)

It was a political baptism of fire for the candidate, who had always run unopposed for Ashland County DA. The fiery dunking continues. With thoughts already turning to 2012, Democrats have a smorgasbord of 87 freshman GOP congressman to choose from. Pulling the rug out from under any of them would chip away at the House’s Republican majority. But Politico says Democrats are singling out Duffy “for particularly rough treatment … determined to portray him as a superficial ideologue who’s not ready for primetime.”

The story’s very style is revealing of Duffy’s new notoriety: The widely-read news site identifies him by his last name alone, although he swims in a legislative fishbowl with 434 other representatives. Politico posits different explanations for the bullseye painted on Duffy: Opponents fear he could run for statewide office in Wisconsin; he’s easy picking in the district long held by Democratic Congressman Dave Obey; or he signals a new Republican tradition in Wisconsin Democrats are eager to stamp out.

The story adds, “Democrats concede that they feel a deep animus toward him born of the notion that the former reality TV star is simply unfit to succeed a congressional titan like Obey.”

Duffy is doing his best to capitalize on the situation. In an email to campaign supporters last week, Duffy said with relish, “I’ve only been in office two and a half months and already I’m the number one target for Washington’s Democrats.”

dave obey

Those very partisans “are ready to spend millions of dollars to defeat me in 2012. In fact, they’ve already started. That’s why I need your help now,” he continues, noting that a campaign finance reporting period ends soon. “Our opponents will be looking to see what impact their attacks have had on enthusiasm for my reelection.” Duffy wants a strong showing.

The post-election attacks against the freshman began earlier this year. The DCCC bought radio ads against 19 Republicans in January, including Duffy, accusing them of supporting large cuts in federal funding for education and science. The ad, which ran in his district, said, “We should tell Sean Duffy to work with President Obama to create jobs, instead of supporting a partisan plan that costs jobs.”

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin has fired its own arrows. After Duffy authored his bill, the RESET (“Recovering Excessive Stimulus Expenditures for Taxpayers”) Act, which would have returned unspent stimulus dollars to the U.S. Treasury for deficit reduction, DPW Chairman Mike Tate said “Hollywood Lumberjack Sean Duffy” was threatening more than $20 million in projects in his own district, including a nursing facility for veterans.

In announcing the Act, which was later folded into a GOP spending bill, Duffy was unclear on whether it would return $7 billion in unassigned, unspent stimulus funding or $161 billion in funding assigned to projects and programs (such as the nursing facility) but not yet spent. A Duffy spokesman told NewsBuzz last month that, in fact, the Act only targeted the $7 billion in uncommitted dollars.

In recent weeks, Duffy has remained mum on whether he supports Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to limit public employee bargaining in the state, writing it off as a state issue, but Democrats pounced when Walker appeared at a northern Wisconsin Republican fundraiser on March 12 with Duffy. It was a local affair put on by the Ashland and Bayfield County Republican parties, a Lincoln Day dinner at the Steak Pit restaurant in Washburn.

“While thousands of nurses, firefighters and teachers are about to lose their jobs, and Wisconsin’s standard of living is driven into the dirt, Hollywood Sean Duffy and Scott Walker find time to raise champagne toasts to their Koch brothers masters,” said Tate, referring to billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch, who donated to both their 2010 campaigns. (No reporters spotted any Koch folks at the fundraiser.) “It is an obscene display, but at least we see Walker and Duffy now for who they are-true enemies of Wisconsin’s working families.”

DCCC responded by launching an online campaign linking Duffy to Walker. “By standing at Governor Walker’s side and expecting to profit off his deplorable agenda, Representative Sean Duffy has made it clear that he supports a coordinated campaign to sell out Wisconsin working families,” said DCCC spokesman Haley Morris.

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