Strickland campaign has TV commercials pulled - WFMJ.com News weather sports for Youngstown-Warren Ohio

The Ted Strickland campaign was hit with another financial blow on Tuesday, when the Senate Majority PAC, a big financial supporter of the campaign, canceled TV ad time in several Ohio cities. 

It sends the message that National Democrats may be waving the white flag in the U.S. Senate race with Rob Portman.

"You don't have a plan where you pull out money, leave Ted Strickland, hanging, blowing in the wind for a month and then suddenly rush in and dump several million dollars in the race, you just don't do that," said Jeremy Pelzer, a political reporter for cleveland.com

The Senate Majority PAC is following the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee who pulled TV ads for Strickland last week.

"It means that it's all but certain National Democrats have abandoned Ted Strickland and this race and they think he's going to lose," said Pelzer.

Pelzer says Strickland is losing to Portman because of how effective Portman's tv ad campaign has been. 

"They've done something fundamental in politics which is they've been able to define a candidate before he's been able to define himself. They brought up his record as Governor and they made it seem like he's run the state into the ground and a lot of people who might not know Ted Strickland, now feel they know who he is," said Pelzer.

A Strickland campaign spokesman says, "There’s still a lot of race left to run, and there’s no one who knows Ohio better or is a stronger grassroots campaigner than Ted Strickland. We just recently launched our paid media campaign, the national environment is rapidly deteriorating around Portman, he’s facing a daily firestorm about his continued support for Trump -- and Portman’s small, weak field operation can’t compete with the Ohio Democratic Party’s coordinated field campaign which has hundreds of organizers and volunteers across the state working to elect Ted, Secretary Clinton and Democrats at every level. Ted’s going to do what he does best: campaign vigorously across Ohio, talking about the central contrast in this race – he’s fighting for working people because that where he comes from and that’s who he cares about, while Senator Portman is looking out for his rich and powerful friends.”

A Monmouth University poll released last month showed Portman leading Strickland by 8 points.