A new ad by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) re-election campaign accidentally included a clip of the Duke University basketball team instead of the University of Kentucky’s team.
The new ad, titled “Rebuild” was released Tuesday and included a clip of Duke players Lance Thomas and Jon Scheyer jumping and hugging in celebration during the 2010 NCAA Championship victory. The players appear at around the 1:00 minute mark.
The confusion is understandable. Both Duke’s and Kentucky’s colors are white and blue.
McConnell’s campaign quickly pulled the ad once viewers noticed the Duke players and replaced it with a new version that featured University of Kentucky’s Julius Randle.
McConnell, by the way, graduated from both the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky. He’s generally avoided expressing a preference between the two teams but when Louisville won the March Madness tournament last year McConnell was thrilled.
McConnell’s likely Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes, jabbed at the campaign over Twitter and a top McConnell staffer responded.
.@AlisonForKY as a failed candidate, you selected Wichita State to defeat UK last round. #oops. #KYSEN
— Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) March 25, 2014
On a more serious note, the McConnell campaign said it was “horrified” by the mistake.
“The ad was intended to highlight Kentucky’s basketball dominance and obviously the web ad vendor has become so accustomed to watching national championship celebrations in the bluegrass state that they made a mistake with one of the images. Obviously we were horrified by the error and quickly changed it,” said McConnell spokeswoman Allison Moore.
Here is the original ad:
And here is the revised ad:
