The Washington Independent » campaign advertising

McCain Slashes Colorado Advertising

Matthew DeLong — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:24:23 +0000

Apparently confirming news stories that the McCain campaign views its chances of winning Colorado as bleak and is reassessing its spending priorities for swing-state advertising, The Denver Post reports the campaign has severely scaled back its ad budget in the Rocky Mountain State.

[Sen. John] McCain, who trails Barack Obama by an average of 5 percentage points in Colorado polls, this week bought a total of $305,550 worth of ads at KUSA-Channel 9, KCNC-Channel 4 and KMGH-Channel 7, according to records. That is a 46 percent decrease from the week before, and a 56 percent slide from two weeks ago.

For the final eight days of the campaign season, McCain has purchased a little more than $50,000 of ad time at Channel 4 and $67,000 at Channel 9, which is watched by 40 percent of the market. McCain had not purchased ad time for those days at Channel 7 as of Wednesday.

By comparison, Obama has purchased more than $500,000 worth of advertising at Channel 4 and Channel 9 for the final week. Add on the $287,700 he has laid out for ads at Channel 7, and it’s nearly seven times what McCain is spending.

McCain is slated to appear at two rallies in Colorado tomorrow. However, campaign rallies are often scheduled a week or more in advance. With the electoral map seeming to shift on a nearly daily basis, the real measure of whether the campaign thinks it can realistically win the state will be if McCain or Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin spend any more of their increasingly valuable time in the state before Nov. 4.

But, as I noted in a previous post, polls indicate that Ohio appears to be slipping away from McCain as well. If McCain loses Ohio and Colorado, it becomes very difficult to imagine a scenario in which McCain can gather the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.

McCain Advisers Don’t Deny Scaling Back in Wisconsin and New Hampshire

Matthew DeLong — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:13:30 +0000

A pair of McCain campaign officials went to extraordinary lengths today to sidestep a news report that the campaign was halting new advertising buys in Wisconsin and New Hampshire — an indication that the campaign may be preparing to abandon the states with two weeks left until the general election.

In a McCain campaign conference call with the GOP presidential nominee’s traveling press corps, Mike DuHaime, Sen. John McCain’s political director, and campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds sought to paint a rosy picture for McCain in Pennsylvania, but reporters wanted to talk about the report from ABC’s George Stephanopolous. The report asserts that the campaign is stretching out existing ad buys in Wisconsin and New Hampshire — Colorado was added in an update — rather than purchasing new air time.

Asked about the report, DuHaime said:

“I believe that Wisconsin and New Hampshire very much remain in play for us. They are obviously states that Sen. [John] Kerry won…Our plan is to compete heavily in both of those states, and we think we’ve got a great shot.”

Bounds was asked if he was denying ABC’s report, but he ducked the question:

“We reserve the right to move advertising dollars around, and it shouldn’t be overly-analyzed. We will continue to shift resources in and out of states as our strategy plays out.”

When asked if the campaign is, in fact, “stretching” its existing buys, Bounds said:

“I have to be pretty firm on this…We continue to be on the air in all of our target states, including Wisconsin and New Hampshire. We, of course, reserve the right, just like the Obama campaign, to adjust our buys in these markets based on the strategic objectives we need to achieve. Today, John McCain’s message is in Wisconsin and New Hampshire. We expect to move strategically toward touching voters in key target states so we can win on Election Day.”

McCain has not appeared in Wisconsin since Oct. 10. He is slated to appear at a rally in Manchester tomorrow.

If McCain’s schedule in coming days lacks appearances in Colorado and New Hampshire, it will be a further indication that the electoral map has gotten considerably smaller for the Republican — and Pennsylvania will become even more of a must-win state for McCain.

UPDATE: Marc Ambinder adds Maine to the list.

Obama’s Keating Attack Goes Live

Ari Melber — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:25:20 +0000

We’ll do it live, as they say.

The Obama campaign is aggressively pushing its new video attacking Sen. John McCain on the Keating Five. Campaign spokesman Bill Burton blasted reporters with a terse, dramatic note this afternoon: “Keating-McCain documentary is now live.”

The campaign is also using its email list to juice the video’s traffic. (A preview clip quickly attracted more than a quarter of a million views on YouTube.)

I discuss the offensive more in this post, and here’s the infamous new documentary: