Report: Missouri TV stations drop Akin ads

COLUMBIA, Mo., Sept. 7 (UPI) -- Some Missouri TV stations have stopped running campaign ads for embattled Republican U.S. Senate nominee Todd Akin due to lack of payment, KOMU-TV8 reported.

A spokesman for Akin, who has been under fire for remarks he made last month about rape and pregnancy, said Friday the KOMU report is "factually wrong," The Hill reported.

A message was sent on Akin's Twitter account saying it was "misleading & wrong" to suggest the campaign was unable to pay for the ads, The Hill reported.

KOMU said Akin's campaign had bought time through the end of this week but had not paid in full when the station decided Thursday to drop the remaining ads.

Sarah Mcadoo of the accounting department at KSHB-TV, Kansas City, told KOMU her station had pulled Akin's ads from its advertising schedule for Friday and Saturday.

"No ads were pulled," Akin campaign spokesman Ryan Hite said in a Tweet. "All ad time has been paid for."

Akin has been under pressure from Republican leaders -- including presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan -- to leave the race, after his remark in an Aug. 19 interview that "the female body has ways to try to" preclude pregnancy in case of "a legitimate rape."

The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee has said it will pull $5 million in advertising it had planned to spend on behalf of Akin's campaign, and third-party political organizations -- including Crossroads GPS and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- have said they will withdraw funding from Akin's campaign.

As the TV stations dropped Akin's ads, incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill is running ads casting herself as a moderate -- highlighting a ranking by the National Journal placing her in the middle of the liberal-to-conservative ideological spectrum, The Hill said.