Wegner takes on Berkley with T.V. ad buy

U.S. Rep. Shelley BerkleyLAS VEGAS—Republican Kenneth Wegner has made his first ad buy of the cycle in his newest effort to unseat Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley in Nevada’s 1st Congressional District.

The commercial, produced by Caples Productions in Las Vegas, began running Sunday and will be on the air “from now until November 4th,” according to Wegner. He described the buy as “700 commercials a week” and said they were airing all over cable including on the Food Network, the Travel Channel, Discovery, MSNBC and the History Channel.

Click here to read the commercial’s script.

Click here to view the commercial.

Despite a disclaimer on the ad urging financial support, Wegner said he is self-funding his campaign, putting “everything I own” into it.

Besides the commercials Wegner said he had already contracted with a phone service to make approximately 300,000 calls to registered voters throughout the district.

Wegner, a retired Army veteran who previously ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, ran against Berkley in 2006 and received 31 percent of the vote. This year, he faces three other Republicans in the primary, Chris Dyer, Ed “Mr. Clean” Hamilton and Ray Kornfeld.

Regardless of who the Republican nominee is, he will face an uphill battle to defeat Berkley. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the 1st Congressional District by over 55,000 and Berkley, a five-term incumbent, had well over $1 million cash-on-hand at the close of the last reporting period.

Wegner has not yet filed his statement of candidacy with the Federal Elections Commission, but said he will “next Monday.”

Berkley’s campaign declined to comment on Wegner’s ad buy.