Tag: campaign ads
Trump Campaign Sues Over Ad Reciting His Pandemic Failures

Trump Campaign Sues Over Ad Reciting His Pandemic Failures

Donald Trump's reelection campaign filed a lawsuit Monday against a local television station in Wisconsin, accusing it of airing a campaign ad the suit calls "false and defamatory" — even though the ad accurately relays Trump's comments.

The ad, produced by the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, uses audio clips of Trump downplaying the new coronavirus.

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Clinton Ad Blitz Outpaces Trump As His Super PACs Bow Out

Clinton Ad Blitz Outpaces Trump As His Super PACs Bow Out

By Michelle Conlin, Grant Smith and Ginger Gibson

NEW YORK (Reuters) – In the crucial last weeks of the U.S. presidential campaign, Democrat Hillary Clinton has dramatically widened her advantage over Republican rival Donald Trump in ad spending, according to campaign finance reports released on Thursday.

The newest filings showed Clinton’s campaign and Super PAC outspending Trump in the first three weeks of October by a factor of two to one on everything from national TV ads to local outreach on smartphone screens.

At the same time, the two Super PACs associated with Trump’s White House bid have seen their fundraising start to stall out, with one of the groups reserving no broadcast or cable ads between Oct. 20 and Election Day, according to data from ad-tracking firm SMG Delta.

Clinton and Priorities USA, the Super PAC that supports her, have spent $360 million on all types of advertising since the beginning of the campaign, said the new reports, which covered spending through Oct. 19.

That total blows away the $147 million spent on advertising by Trump and his two affiliated Super PACs during the same period.

What’s more, for the period beginning Oct. 20 and running through the Nov. 8 election, Clinton and her Super PAC have reserved an additional $55 million in TV ads, according to SMG Delta, including $30.5 million from her campaign and $25 million from her Super PAC.

A Super PAC is a fund-raising group that must operate separately from political campaigns but can raise unlimited sums.

The Trump campaign has committed to spending $32.4 million during the same period, with the Trump Super PAC known as Great America PAC saying it would also contribute another $2.35 million in broadcast and cable ads.

The newest batch of campaign finance filings also reveal that the celebrity businessman’s recent vow that he would contribute in excess of $100 million to his campaign out of his own fortune has also fallen short.

Trump contributed $56 million through the end of September, chipping in an additional $31,000 since then.

Spending on television commercials does not decide an election. Trump, with his controversial statements and inflammatory tweets, has mastered the art of garnering free media coverage, which is expected to top $5 billion by Election Day, more than double the amount Clinton is likely to earn, according to data analytics tracker mediaQuant.

But ever since Trump’s campaign began to falter last summer after he criticized the family of a slain U.S. soldier, Clinton has been able to use her ad spending juggernaut to repetitively pound at criticisms of Trump, which several strategists said had exacerbated his slide in polls, where he now lags Clinton by eight percentage points.

Trump could pour more money into his ad operation in the final 11 days of the campaign. Republican presidential campaign operatives said areas where Trump could still spend included battleground states, national ad buys and digital outreach and phone banking.

But they also said it may be too late for such outlays to make a difference.

“The stations would gladly take his money,” said Fred Davis, a major Republican ad maker. “I just don’t think he will.”

During the Republican nominating contests, Trump vanquished 16 opponents in part by eschewing campaign finance mainstays such as ads and pollsters.

“He felt he won the primary with basically no ad spending by being a larger-than-life TV personality. It worked,” Davis said. But the general election, he added, was “a whole new ballgame.”

ADS DON’T MATTER ‘UNTIL THEY DO’

Many of Clinton’s TV ads have focused on upbeat messages featuring her work on behalf of women and children. She’s also spent a large amount of her advertising budget attacking Trump, including a commercial that showed children listening to some of his most demeaning remarks about women.

Trump’s ads, by contrast, paint a dark picture of America, besieged by violence and on the brink of economic destruction.

Rick Wilson, a former strategist for Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, said “ads don’t matter, until they do,” adding that comments by Trump that critics have called racist and sexist were providing maximum ammunition for Clinton.

Trump may not be able to rely on his small cadre of big donors, either: Make America Number 1 PAC – a super PAC formed by conservative mega-donor Robert Mercer – raised nothing between Oct. 1 and 19.

At the same time, Trump has also stopped doing high-dollar fundraisers.

Overall, the reports released on Thursday night showed how much Trump and his lean campaign operation have been dwarfed by Clinton’s big money juggernaut. In total, Trump has raised $292 million between his campaign and affiliated Super PACs, including his own contributions, whereas Clinton has hauled in more than twice that, at $718 million.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

Photo: U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gestures to supporters at the IBEW union hall in Commerce, California, U.S., May 24, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Campaign Consultants And Media Companies Are Cashing In On Our Corrupt Elections

Campaign Consultants And Media Companies Are Cashing In On Our Corrupt Elections

Four days before Ben Carson finally wrapped up his failed candidacy, his campaign paid $348,141 to a direct mail company. The same amount was paid at the start of the month to Pennsylvania-based Action Mailers, bringing the company’s February total close to $1 million.

That same day, a web service provider for Carson’s campaign (run by the candidate’s chief marketing officer) was paid $59,000. In February, as the campaign limped to an end, checks totaling $651,000 were sent to Eleventy for web services.

Carson, in an interview with CNN after he announced that he would be dropping out of the race, said “We had people who didn’t really seem to understand finances, or maybe they did—maybe they were doing it on purpose.”

In total, through the end of February, Carson’s campaign raised $63 million and spent $58 million, according to FEC filings.

Much of that money came from small individual donations, and much of it was spent on a handful of companies tasked with raising money from those individual donors. There are many links between companies paid money by his campaign and the individuals who surrounded Carson.

Eleventy, whose president, Ken Dawson, was the campaign’s marketing chief, received close to $6 million over the course of the campaign. Action Mailers received over $5 million. Carson spent just over $5 million on television buys, less even than Donald Trump, whose “free media” campaign has kept his ad expenses incredibly low. Just as important, Carson spent little on developing a ground game.

“There’s a lot of people who love me, they just won’t vote for me,” Carson said as he bowed out. Hundreds of thousands loved him enough to give money to what they thought was an actual campaign.

The rise of super PACs in the aftermath of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision has often dominated the discussion over money in politics in recent election cycles. There is much more to the tale. It’s not just about who is spending the cash, but where it’s going.

Harpers Magazine, in its April cover story, delves into the world of “strategists, pollsters, TV-ad makers, media buyers, direct-mail specialists, broadcasters, and other subcategories of what we should properly call the election-industrial complex.” Its conclusion leaves the reader feeling, if only for a moment, somewhat sorry for the billionaires and multi-millionaires pumping money into elections. It’s all wasted extremely efficiently, mostly on advertising buys.

Exhibit A: Jeb Bush, whose campaign and supportive PACs spent close to $150 million on his failed candidacy, with nothing to show for it but… well, actually, there’s just nothing to show for it.

The big winners are consultants and television companies.

Les Moonves, chairman of CBS, made it clear, twice, that what may be bad for America is very good for his company. “Super PACs may be bad for America,” Moonves said following the 2012 election, “but they’re very good for CBS.” That year, CBS made $180 million out of the election.

This election cycle, not only are broadcasters pulling in cash from advertising, they also have Donald Trump to thank for an unprecedented ratings spike.

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” Moonves told a media conference in San Francisco in December. “Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? … The money’s rolling in and this is fun,” Moonves said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”

Photo: Supporters of Dr. Ben Carson congregate near Dr. Carson’s book tour bus after a book signing in Ames, Iowa.

Sanders Releases Radio Ad In Arabic Before Michigan Primary

Sanders Releases Radio Ad In Arabic Before Michigan Primary

Less than a week before the Michigan primaries, the Sanders campaign released a radio ad in the state with a simple, repetitive theme: stand together. This time, the Vermont senator’s message was in Arabic.

Dearborn, Michigan is home to the largest concentration of Arabs in the country. Some 40,000 predominantly Muslim Arabs live there today, and as a result of the racism pandered by the Republican candidates throughout this election, the vast majority Dearborn’s Muslims are planning to vote for a Democrat.

The Arabic language ad made the choice eminently clear for listeners.

“Republican candidates are attacking Muslims because of their religion. Bernie Sanders wants to end the racism and hatred that divides us.

“When a Muslim student voiced her fears of the hateful rhetoric in this election, Bernie responded, by saying: If we stand for anything at all we have got to stand together to end all forms of racism and I will lead that effort as President of the United States.

“On Tuesday, March 8th, vote for the candidate who stands for all of us: Bernie Sanders.”

Sanders, whose campaign has already shared a revolutionary-themed poster in Arabic, is attempting to woo voters to his campaign against big banks and bigots alike. The effort is backed by an uncoordinated campaign by several social media groups aimed at boosting Arab and Muslim political participation in the 2016 election.

On Facebook, the group Muslim Americans for Bernie posted a video of an Ohio imam going door-to-door and asking for people to vote for Sanders. Arabs for Bernie, a Twitter account, posted a similar message after Sanders’s rally in Dearborn:

The 2016 presidential election has awakened the Muslim vote in America. Seventy-three percent of registered Muslim voters have said they are planning to vote in the next election, with the vast majority going to Clinton and Sanders.

Turns out calling for a “complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” clearly hasn’t gone over too well.

Photo: A printed out sign found in Hamtramck, Michigan asking voters to choose Bernie Sanders in the upcoming Michigan primaries. Graham Liddell via Twitter