It must have chagrined Mitch McConnell to wake up last Wednesday and discover that the New York Times loved New Jersey's Republican senatorial candidate Bob Franks more than he did. Maybe McConnell, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was daunted by the more than $ 50 million in personal funds that Democrat Jon Corzine has poured into the race. Maybe he was ticked off that Franks twice voted in favor of the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill, towards which McConnell has vowed over-my-dead-body opposition. Whatever the reason, McConnell didn't offer Franks a cent of NRSC money until Franks prevailed upon him to do so at a face to face meeting in mid-October.
The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Times took the opposite view of Corzine's money: While admitting some sympathy with Corzine's ideology, both papers found little to like in the way his money has permitted a machine-style buying of New Jersey political organizations. And both papers endorsed Franks.
Since then, things have begun to change. A late-week Quinnipiac poll showed the race narrowing from 14 points to 5, the closest it's been since the primaries. The case for TV ads in the New York and Philadelphia markets touting the two endorsements and introducing voters to Franks's own, more moderate agenda became obvious. (Up until now, Franks's ads have focused on Corzine's money advantage.)
In other words, maxing out on ads for Franks now looks like a better investment than it did a week ago. So McConnell announced to Franks last Thursday afternoon that the senatorial committee's money would be forth-coming. Franks is now set to make his biggest ad buys of the campaign: $ 550,000 in New York and $ 265,000 in Philadelphia. That will still leave at least $ 900,000 for a closing-week blitz.
Certain mistakes, though, can't be unmade. For months, the NRSC's stinginess dried up other funding sources, and left Franks fending for himself, with small subsidies from the moderate Republican Leadership Council and tiny donations that Franks had to raise personally, distracting him from the campaign trail for days at a time. McConnell will either get credit for decently acknowledging a mistake, and moving bravely to fix it, or he'll be remembered as having applied to the Franks campaign the same tactics that Vladimir Putin applied to the submarine Kursk -- launching a massive rescue effort at exactly the point where it was too late to make any difference. We'll find out in a week.