Candidates, Outside Groups Getting 'Increasingly Bold' With Campaign Videos

Sen Mitch McConnell (R-KY) grins ear-to-ear while shaking hands with a Vietnam veteran. In casual T-shirt and sweater, Sen Mark Begich (D-AK) chats up Alaska fishermen as they fix netting. Rep Bruce Braley (D-IA) walks past bales of hay in a field. The high-quality footage is just sitting on their campaign websites, available to anybody -- say, friends who run super PACs and outside groups -- who might want to make it part of a campaign commercial in this year's high-stakes Senate elections. The law prohibits any candidate from coordinating with these groups, which may share the goal of winning an election to Congress this year. But nothing says a group like the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition can't use the public footage of Sen McConnell in a campaign commercial that could help the Senate's minority leader win a sixth term. So the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition has done just that. Such non-coordination reflects the fierce competition of this year's elections, in which Republicans need to gain only six seats to win control of the Senate and have a profound influence over the last two years of President Barack Obama's presidency.