This is the first presidential election year since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which freed corporations and unions from previous campaign spending limitations. In Ohio’s U.S. Senate race alone, these third-party agencies have spent an estimated $8.9 million since last year supporting and attacking Democratic incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown and Republican challenger state Treasurer Josh Mandel.
Very little of that spending has been reported to the Federal Elections Commission, however, making it difficult to track.
“Under the regulatory scheme, (so-called issue ads) don’t exist. They don’t count as anything, so they never have to be reported,” said Bob Biersack, senior fellow at the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign spending. “That’s where all the action is now, or a lot of it. It’ll be September before you’ll start to see disclosure of these types of ads.”
Dayton ad spending
When certain groups don’t have to report ad spending to the FEC, the only way to track it is through local television station records. That data shows political ad spending for the fall election is already heating up in Dayton.
The senior citizen advocacy group 60-Plus recently spent $1 million statewide on issue ads criticizing Brown. About 115 of those ads are airing this week on Dayton’s four local network TV stations thanks to $45,600 in ad purchases.
The Service Employees International Union bought local ads to back Brown, spending $21,375 for 53 ads this week at those same four stations.
But the third-party group flooding local airwaves recently is Crossroads GPS, the conservative group tied to Republican strategist Karl Rove, which supports Mitt Romney and Mandel. In the four-week period from May 23 to June 18, Crossroads has bought 493 ads at the four stations, spending $244,325.
Those ads are separate from the ads bought and produced by actual candidates.
“One problem people are worried about is that it’s not going to be possible to even buy television time in the fall,” Biersack said. “So much of this is being reserved now. ... You can’t decide late that you’re going to (do a big ad push), because it won’t be possible.”
There’s a local example of that, too, in the race where Democrat Sharen Neuhardt is running for Congress against incumbent Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville. Last week, the Neuhardt campaign announced that the national Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had reserved $332,000 worth of air time in the 10th district — that includes Montgomery, Greene and part of Fayette counties. Local station records show hundreds of commercial spots have been reserved for the DCCC from Oct. 2 through Nov. 6.
Issue ads, Wisconsin
Issue ads — which never tell the viewer specifically to vote for or against a candidate — are the ones that don’t have to be reported. Those commercials may argue that a legislator’s tax or energy policy is terrible and the ad likely will urge people to call and criticize that legislator’s stance.
Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett said he dislikes the Citizens United ruling and current campaign rules, adding that some of the special interest groups “don’t seem to care about the truth” in their ads.
“The best campaign finance reform is full accountability and full transparency, and it’s a shame we don’t have that,” Bennett said. “I worry about special interests on both sides. You have no control over them, and they can get a candidate in trouble with what they say.”
Justin Barasky, spokesman for the Brown campaign, agreed that campaigns often don’t know what’s coming from third-party groups, and have to react quickly to rebut claims, some of which are ridiculed on websites such as politifact.com and factcheck.org.
Biersack said while SuperPACs have to report their spending, nonprofit 501(c) groups don’t have to report until expenditures are made in the last 60 days before the election. He said one recent study showed unreported political spending doubled the spending that was on the record. The Washington, D.C., newspaper Roll Call reported last month that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has spent about $3.8 million in unreported ads targeting Brown in the past year.
Last week’s recall election of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker shed even more light on just how much “outside money” is going into high-profile races.
According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, about $33.5 million of the record $66 million-plus that was spent on that race was spent not by the candidates, but by third-party groups. And millions more were donated directly from those third-party groups to the candidates’ campaigns. Some news agencies reported that in the final days before Tuesday’s election, there were political ads being shown during every single television program.
The record-setting spending helped push turnout for the recall vote to 2.51 million, 350,000 more people than voted in the original governor race in 2010. Walker won both races, by six percentage points the first time and by seven points the second time.
Making a difference?
With turnout higher, but the results very similar, Walker’s victory made some wonder what impact all this campaign spending really has.
John Sides, a political science professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said the biggest issue is not whether the money comes from candidates or outside groups, but simply that there’s so much more political spending in total.
But Sides said timing is key, and other than name recognition, groups spending millions of dollars months in advance of the election, may not get the results they desire.
“There is some evidence that within a week or two, the effects of a campaign ad binge decay and voters forget,” he said. “I wonder whether a lot of this early money is essentially being wasted. I’m not sure that there’s as much bang for the buck.”
Sides does say that campaign spending often has more impact for challengers than incumbents, because they are less familiar to voters.
Barasky claimed outside spending has had a huge impact on the Ohio Senate race. Outside groups favoring Mandel, who is new to statewide office, have outspent those favoring longtime officeholder Brown by 5-1 or 6-1, and over that same period, Brown’s lead in polls has gone from double digits to single digits.
“This race is only competitive because of third-party spending,” Barasky said. “We’re getting drowned out on TV.”
Mandel spokesman Travis Considine declined to comment on third-party spending. Bennett, the Republican Party chair, said he thinks the Mandel-Brown race has tightened in part because Mandel was more of an unknown until this year and struck a positive message in his first ads. He said he believes third-party spending in that race will even out as groups that have focused on Wisconsin turn their attention to Ohio.
“If you’re for a candidate, you love the attack ads on the other guy, and you hate the ones on your guy,” Bennett said. “But the vote will be decided by the folks in the middle, the independent voters. ... I think those voters are pretty smart when it comes to separating out this stuff.”
One thing few campaign-watchers will deny is the sheer amount of money being spent.
“We’re approaching the point where there has been more money spent against Sherrod in ads (more than $9 million) than he spent in his entire race in 2006, on everything,” Barasky said. “That’s crazy because this campaign hasn’t really heated up yet.”
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