Groups pump millions into negative ad push

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Republican Sen. Rob Portman:

“I have no control over outside spending in this race. This is all part of campaigning in 2016. Whereas Ted Strickland is solely reliant on outside special interest money — including the $1 million currently on air from Senate Majority PAC and the $10 million from the DSCC announced last week — I am focused on running my campaign and spreading my message across Ohio. I can point to nearly 50 of our bills that became law and are helping Ohioans. I’ve passed legislation to combat the heroin and prescription drug crisis, end human trafficking, improve worker training, and create more construction jobs through faster permitting. While Ted Strickland is running an ‘invisible’ campaign, I’m running on my record of achieving results for Ohio families. I’m excited to talk about my record.”

Democrat Ted Strickland:

“I share the incredible frustration that Ohioans and Americans have about the role of money in politics. We should not allow the well-connected and ultra wealthy to hijack our democratic process and rig the system to elect those like Senator Portman who are pushing their agenda at Ohio’s expense. I am proud to have earned the endorsement of the group End Citizens United, who called me a ‘campaign finance reform champion.’ … I will work to overturn (Citizens United) so that our country cannot be bought and sold to the highest bidders, and I will support Supreme Court judges that will put our democracy before the interests of corporate billionaires. I also support the DISCLOSE Act, which would improve the reporting and disclosure of political spending in federal elections, and I support increasing the transparency of the FCC’s public file database to make it more easily searchable. Since last year, my campaign has also been filing our campaign fundraising report electronically with the Federal Election Commission — increasing disclosure and saving money for taxpayers. I want to require this kind of electronic filing for all Senate campaigns by supporting the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act.”

Doug Livingston, Akron Beacon Journal

By the numbers

$1.2 billion: Spending from outside groups on state and federal election campaigns since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

71: Percentage of that total that went toward negative ads.

75: Percentage of Americans who say money and influence from outside interests is the “biggest problem with elected officials in Washington.”

$569 million: Amount of money outside groups spent on the 2012 presidential race.

$85 million: Amount of money outside groups spent in Ohio in 2012 on the races for president, Senate and Congress.

$6.77 million: Amount outside groups have spent so far on the U.S. Senate race in Ohio between Rob Portman and Ted Strickland.

Sources: Federal Election Commission, Center for Responsive Politics, Pew Research Center, Campaign Finance Institute.

Race for VP

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Tom Troy

The (Toledo) Blade

Laura A. Bischoff

Columbus Bureau

Groups funded by rich business people and corporations outside Ohio and working separately from the candidates and political parties are spending millions of dollars to influence how Ohioans think and vote.

And the amount of money, the number of ads and the barrage of mean-spirited messages is only going to increase.

Spending this year by independent political groups with confusing-sounding labels like super PACs, 501(C)(4)s, and 527 organizations will almost certainly surpass 2012, when at least $85 million was spent in Ohio on the races for president, Senate and Congress.

In this year’s Senate race, one of the most watched races in the country, outside groups have already spent $6.77 million, according to the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to transparency in government and politics.

Negative ads aren’t new, but there was a time not so long ago when the candidates could be held accountable for the tone of what appears on the nation’s television screens. Those days are gone. Spending by outside groups, unleashed by the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court Citizens United decision that uncapped contribution limits, has soared over the past six years and made politics an increasingly nasty blood sport.

Since Citizens United ushered in the era of the super PACs, outside groups have spent more than $1.2 billion on state and federal election campaigns, an amount six times what had been spent over the previous 30 years, according to a Campaign Finance Institute analysis of Federal Election Commission filings.

And since 2010, a greater percentage of the money has been spent attacking candidates. Of that $1.2 billion, $845 billion — or 71 percent — went toward negative ads.

The negative tone can already be seen in the U.S. Senate race in Ohio, where polls show Republican Sen. Rob Portman and Democrat Ted Strickland are in a dead heat.

“Rob Portman — a job creator everywhere but Ohio,” the narrator in an anti-Portman ad intones.

“Vote against Ted Strickland. He’s failed Ohio’s families,” says an anti-Strickland.

Neither ad was paid for by the candidates’ campaigns.

The Senate Majority PAC — a group that includes hedge fund managers, real estate brokers, actors and others — funded the anti-Portman ad, and has spent $1.7 million in ads criticizing Portman’s support for trade deals.

As for the anti-Strickland effort, three PACs — Fighting for Ohio, Freedom Partners Action Fund and National Rifle Association of America Political Victory Fund — have spent a combined $4 million against him.

Some of the prominent names involved in these groups — members of the Lindner family, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and billionaire Charles Koch — attest to the national importance of the race, which could determine which party controls the Senate beginning in January.

But it also means Ohioans will be subjected to an almost non-stop onslaught of the kind of messages voters say turns them off to the political process.

A Pew Research Center poll showed that nearly three-quarters of Americans say money and influence from outside interests is the “biggest problem with elected officials in Washington.”

The pivotal moment

The Citizens United case (Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission) changed the rules of politics, giving First Amendment protection to wealthy individuals, corporations, and unions to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money — provided they don’t directly coordinate with the candidates they are supporting.

“I have no control over outside spending in this race,” said Portman when asked to provide solutions to the influx of money from non-candidate groups and donors from outside of Ohio. “This is all part of campaigning in 2016.”

Strickland said he shares “the incredible frustration that Ohioans and Americans have about the role of money in politics,” and said he would work to overturn the Citizens United decision if elected to the Senate.

The February 2010 decision had immediate and far-reaching impact. The Campaign Finance Institute, a think tank that specializes in campaign finance policy, estimates that in the 10 months following the ruling, outside spending on positive ads to support Congressional candidates doubled, while spending on attack ads increased nearly eight-fold.

With little transparency, and without culpability for the candidates, there was little incentive to play nice.

There was also little incentive — or requirement — to report where the money was coming from.

According to the nonprofit, nonpartisan group Center for Responsive Politics,outside spending in the 2012 presidential race leaned Republican, with $424.4 million supporting Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and $145 million supporting Democratic President Barack Obama.

However, less clear is the source of the money, often referred to “dark money” because it is so hard to track.

A good example of how independent expenditures influence elections while leaving a minimal impact on the public record is that of Americans for Prosperity, the 501(c) organization funded by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

Look up its 2012 expenditures in the Center for Responsive Politics’ website, opensecrets.org, and one line comes up: $33,542,051 spent against President Obama’s re-election.

AFP is not required to disclose its donors to the FEC. Through cross-referencing with nonprofit organizations’ tax returns, the Center for Responsive Politics has identified 66 donors, all of them other organizations. The biggest contributor, with $65 million donated since 2010, is Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, which accounts for about two-thirds of AFP’s total donations of $96.9 million.

Freedom Partners is controlled by the Koch Brothers.

No bread crumbs

How much of the outside money was spent in Ohio is not reported to the Federal Election Commission, and thus is difficult to gauge.

Federal law requires broadcasters to provide public access to all their political advertising contracts, and so the campaigns’ media consultants collect the information through constant contact with the television and radio stations in all of the nation’s media markets. But those records are only required to be kept for two years.

Broadcasters since 2014 have been required to post the information on the Internet, improving the ability of the public and the news media to find out who is spending how much.

It’s still a data-gathering nightmare, however.

Two large organizations contacted by the consortium of news organizations that have brought you this story refused to divulge information about the 2012 presidential election campaign.

The Washington Post in 2012 hired a media firm to collect data and reported that the total spending in Ohio on the 2012 election — including candidates and outside groups — was $78 million in favor of Mr. Romney and $72 million in favor of Mr. Obama, for a total of $150 million.

That made Ohio the third most expensive battleground state, after Florida with $173 million and Virginia with $151 million.

Separating the outside spending is harder. National Public Radio reported that independent political groups spent $28.3 million between April 10 and Oct. 10 in Ohio. It’s reasonable to assume that at least half as much was spent in the final month before the 2012 election.

Given that President Obama was re-elected with a comfortable margin in Ohio, one could ask whether the barrage of anti-Democratic advertising was worth it.

Reportedly, the Koch brothers have taken stock of their political spending after its lack of success in 2012 and 2014.

The publication Politico.com reported that the brothers have taken their spending “deeper” — away from TV ads and into staff, training, data analysis, and building a voter database.

Voter disgust

Nobody expects the 2012 result to tamp down outside spending this year, which means negative ads, one after another, will soon be impossible to escape.

They can be effective certainly, but to a person voters say they don’t like them.

In interviews over the last couple of weeks, Ohioans interviewed for this story called them everything from “disgusting” to “obnoxious” to “dishonest.”

“I think they need to shut up. All they do is bash each other,” said Kris Walker, 53 of Summerville in Preble County. “They’re not out for the people. If the Republican Party was out for the people they would back Donald Trump instead of bashing him.”

“They all talk about each other and they get up in front of everybody and say ‘I don’t say anything negative about anybody.’ Baloney.”

Jeff Senter, 40, of Kettering said he doesn’t mind attacks on a candidate’s policies “because I want to know what your economic plan is.”

But he draws the line when the ads — as they often do — become personal.

Thomas Caltabellotta of Beavercreek said negative ads are so pervasive he tends to notice the positive ones more. Caltabellotta, president of the Wright State University College Democrats, said he worries that all the negative images will cause people to sit out the election.

“It reinforces the notion of ‘well, all politicians suck, so I’m just not going to vote,’” he said.

Stephen Bilen, 38, Bellbrook, has another concern. The ads, he said, provide no useful information.

“At the end of the day I’m left with little information about what someone plans to do when they get into office as opposed to just why I shouldn’t vote for someone,” he said. “So as a voter I’m still back to ground zero with little to no information about what the candidates want to do.”

Staff Writer Lynn Hulsey contributed to this report.