Alexi Giannoulias got lemons, and he's trying to make lemonade.
Last week, the Giannoulias family's Broadway Bank failed. Federal regulators seized the community bank after it couldn't raise the $85 million it needed to stay out of government hands.
It was a huge and expected blow to Giannoulias' U.S. Senate campaign. His experience at the bank as a senior loan officer was a major asset to his successful 2006 state treasurer campaign — and now it's a liability.
Today, Giannoulias' campaign released a new ad that portrays him and his family as part of the national economic crisis, and his campaign lays the blame squarely on Republicans including his opponent, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk.
"Family businesses are dealing with challenges they never would have foreseen. We've seen family businesses go under ... on every block, on every corner," Giannoulias says in the ad.
Then a gentle-voiced female narrator takes over with a not-so-gentle swipe.
"But Washington politician Mark Kirk doesn't get it," the narrator says. "First he votes for the Bush policies that got us into this mess, including tax breaks for companies that ship jobs to China.
"Then, Kirk has the nerve to vote against extending unemployment benefits, saying unemployment isn't a big issue."
Of course, none of this makes the Kirk campaign happy. It's the kind of warm-and-fuzzy turn that could minimize Giannoulias' biggest campaign problem.
Kirsten Kukowski, spokeswoman for the Kirk campaign, released a statement saying that the ad was an attempt to distract voters from Giannoulias' failures at the bank.
"This is nothing more than a desperate political tactic to divert attention from Alexi Giannoulias' reckless business decisions that drove his bank into the ground," Kukowski said, "decisions that will cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation $394.3 million as the fourth most expensive Illinois bank failure in the last 10 years."