McConnell out with first re-election spots of the year

(CNN) -  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is out with a new TV commercial that his team touts as its first major buy for the Kentucky Republican's 2014 re-election campaign.

McConnell's campaign says it's spending six figures over the next two weeks to run the positive ad statewide. The spot features a Kentucky resident named Robert Pierce, who says McConnell helped him recover from throat cancer.

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"These days, I don't have much of a voice. But I and so many Kentuckians have been helped by someone with a strong voice. Mitch McConnell," says Pierce in the commercial.

Pierce then describes how he got cancer after being exposed to high levels of radiation while working at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, before adding that "Mitch McConnell stepped in, and helped create cancer screening programs, and provide compensation for sick workers. He knocked down walls for us. He helped save peoples' lives."

The spot appears to be an effort by the McConnell campaign to raise the Senator's approval and favorable ratings in Kentucky, which are nothing to brag about.

The five-term Senator is facing a conservative primary challenge from businessman Matt Bevin, who enjoys some support from some tea party and grassroots activists. Wednesday Bevin added to those endorsements, as FreedomWorks, a national grassroots conservative group, backed him.

And McConnell's facing a Democratic challenge from Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Grimes' campaign was quick to point out that McConnell used Pierce in a similar ad in his 2008 re-election campaign.

"It is no surprise Mitch McConnell has to recycle old TV ads given that he offers no new ideas. It is insulting to Kentuckians for McConnell to haul out this old, dishonest play every six years when he's on the ballot," said Grimes campaign spokeswoman Charly Norton, in a statement.

"Only the most partisan, embittered, dogmatically liberal activists would have the audacity to call a Paducah cancer survivor's story dishonest. It's a sad day when attack-dog politics trumps basic human decency," said McConnell campaign spokeswoman Allison Moore, in response.

While the new spot (both a 60 second and 30 second version) may be McConnell's first major ad buy, it's far from his first. His campaign went up with their first ad in his 2014 re-election campaign in March of 2013, which was extremely early in the election cycle.

When McConnell's counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, went up with commercials around a year before his November 2010 re-election, the move made political headlines.