Joe the Plumber Buys Ad to Support Missouri Senate Candidate Chuck Purgason
Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher isn't letting up his 15 minutes of fame yet.
Wurzelbacher, who gained notoriety in the 2008 presidential election when he was mentioned by John McCain during a debate, is putting his name behind a 2010 Senate candidate, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. He is funding a television ad in support of Chuck Purgason, a Missouri state senator challenging Rep. Roy Blunt in the Republican Senate primary.
The ad, running through Aug. 3 in every Missouri TV market except for Kansas City, calls Blunt a "pretender" and Purgason a "true conservative."
"Chuck Purgason is a regular guy who accomplishes extraordinary things," Wurzelbacher says in the ad.
Wurzelbacher raised the funds for the ad and bought air time without Purgason's knowledge, according to the Post-Dispatch. He reportedly filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to make an individual expenditure on Purgason's behalf.
"I wanted to show that individuals can have some say in what's going on," Wurzelbacher told the Post-Dispatch. "I called and got a couple of people to donate."
CBSNews.com Special Report: Campaign 2010
Purgason has yet to raise the funds to air his own television ads, and he is far behind Blunt in polls. A recent Post-Dispatch poll showed Blunt leading Purgason 62 percent to 13 percent. Blunt also won in the poll in a match-up with his presumed Democratic opponent, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, by 48 percent to 42 percent.
Wurzelbacher's ad isn't the first attention-getting tactic designed to support Purgason's campaign. The candidate announced last month he was ditching his shaggy toupee in the name of transparency.
Incidentally, Wurzelbacher recently won elected office in his own state of Ohio -- not Missouri. In May, he won one of nearly 400 seats on the Republican Party committee for northwest Ohio's Lucas County. The group meets a few times a year to elect the county chairman and set the party agenda.