Will Brady Brady Respect Your Daughter?

 Are you a woman? Are you married to a woman? Was your mother a woman? 

If you can answer “yes” to any of these questions, there’s something Gov. Pat Quinn wants you to know about his opponent Bill Brady: he’s a cad. A bounder. A sexist, woman-hating misogynist.

That’s the theme of “Daughters,” the anti-Brady ad the Democratic Governors Association began airing Tuesday on Chicago-area TV stations. (Interestingly, it’s being released during National Daughters Week.)

“What can the daughters of Illinois expect if Bill Brady is our next governor?” asks a female narrator, as the camera pans over adorable little girls whose rights Bill Brady wants to trample on.

“Brady opposed the expansion of the family and medical leave,” the narrator says, as we see a bespectacled schoolgirl toting a backpack. “He was one of only three legislators to vote against expanding mammogram coverage, and Bill Brady opposes a woman’s right to choose, even in cases of rape and incest.”

According to Politico, “The ad takes advantage of two of Brady’s most serious vulnerabilities: his downstate base, which leaves in a weaker starting position against Gov. Pat Quinn in Illinois’s population center, and his conservative voting record.”

But Quinn has also had problems appealing to women. In March, a Rasmussen Reports found he was trailing Brady by 17 points among females. More recent polls have shown less of a gender gap, but Quinn clearly lacks an advantage among women that’s considered automatic among Democrats, especially in Illinois. The “Daughters” ad is clearly an attempt to frighten urban women back into the Democratic fold.

In response to our requests for comment, the Brady campaign had this to say: 

Bill Brady voted to expand mammogram coverage – the bill that actually became law -- and Governor Quinn knows it. (*HB1881 /PA90-0007) Illinois already has a Family Medical Leave Act – it is the federal act that became law in 1993.

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