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Campaign Spending: What a Waste
Does all that money accomplish anything?
Pretty much every time I turn on the TV these days, I am reminded of one of the following messages:
- Sherrod Brown loves illegal immigration and will do whatever he can to allow more of it;
- Bernie Moreno is a sleazy car dealer who screwed over his employees;
- Sherrod Brown worked with Donald Trump on fentanyl legislation;
- Bernie Moreno loves Trump and Trump loves him back;
- Sherrod Brown is a career politician and Washington insider who created inflation; or
- Sherrod Brown saved the Ohio steel industry and loves blue-collar workers.
That’s right — it’s election season and I live in a state with a tight Senate race. So, during this year’s Olympics, many of the usual commercials have been replaced by political ads for our Senate candidates (at least it’s a break from the usual fare: lengthy commercials for obscure prescription drugs). And this is only a Senate race — I can imagine what it’s like for people living in presidential swing states right now.
My local Senate candidates have raised a lot of money to run these ads. By May of this year, Sherrod Brown and Bernie Moreno had already reserved $150 million in ad purchases for the fall. They have continued to rake in the cash, so I can only imagine that the football games I watch this fall will be liberally interleaved with even more political ads.
When all is said and done, the Ohio Senate race will be one of the country’s most expensive; hundreds of millions of dollars will have been spent to ensure that I see plenty of American flags, happy steelworkers, and sinister-looking black-and-white footage of the two candidates between now and November.
The Ohio Senate race will cost a lot of money, but it pales in comparison to the presidential race. In the week after she emerged as the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris raised $200 million for her campaign. Her $300 million haul in July dwarfed Donald Trump’s (still impressive) $139 million in fundraising. Experts expect spending on ads alone for the Trump-Harris race to approach $3 billion. Ad spending on all of the 2024 races combined may reach something…
