National Dems start spending in Georgia

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is officially jumping into the Georgia Senate race.

{mosads}The DSCC is in the process of reserving close to $1 million in television time to boost former charity executive Michelle Nunn (D), a Democrat tracking the ad buy confirms. It is the first investment the DSCC’s independent expenditure arm has made into the race.

Democrats have been increasingly bullish about Nunn’s chances in the last 10 days, due to fallout from businessman David Perdue’s (R) recently revealed 2005 comments that he spent “most of my career” focused on outsourcing.

The DSCC had already maxed out the amount of money it could spend in coordinated expenditures with Nunn, but the big-spending independent expenditure side had yet to engage. The buy is a sign that Democrats think Nunn has a real chance to win the race.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee recently invested another $1.45 million in the race on Friday. There had been little early outside spending in the race, partly because of Georgia’s expensive media markets and partly because strategists thought the race might have been likely to head to a runoff. Recent polling shows the two in a dead heat.

Nunn has been on the airwaves slamming Perdue for his outsourcing comments and his business record, and Perdue has been on the air with defensive ads responding to the attacks and looking to tie Nunn to President Obama.

Perdue brought in more than $4.8 million in the last fundraising quarter, besting the nearly $4.2 million Nunn brought in, but she started the quarter with millions more in the bank and has been able to run more TV ads up to this point.