• NV-Sen: Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen announced Thursday that she just booked $14 million in ad time from late July through Election Day, a sum her campaign called the largest ad reservation in Nevada history. Rosen's move comes two months after her allies at Senate Majority PAC booked $36 million to defend her.
Though Election Day may be seven months off, campaigns and outside groups have an incentive to make reservations well ahead of time so they can lock in cheaper ad rates before high demand brings prices up. That's especially true in Nevada, a perennial swing state that will once again see massive spending on the presidential election from Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and outside groups on both sides.
But while the White House and Senate campaigns will attract the most attention in the Silver State, they're by no means the only ones competing for advertising time.
Reproductive rights advocates are also waging an expensive battle to support a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, with AdImpact reporting last week that Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom had made its own $10.8 million reservation. Other contests, including a Democratic drive to gain a two-thirds supermajority in the state Senate, will further drive up ad prices.
Rosen can focus on the general election because she has no serious intra-party opposition and millions in her war chest, but not every candidate is in such an advantageous position. Army veteran Sam Brown, the choice of national Republicans, just got a reminder that he can't ignore the June 11 GOP primary, since former Ambassador to Iceland Jeff Gunter just launched a $3.3 million advertising campaign.
Outside Republican groups don't need to wait until the GOP nomination is decided before attacking Rosen, but perhaps surprisingly, there's been no word of any major super PACs booking TV time for the fall just yet. That will change before long, but Rosen still has reason to hope that a messy primary leaves her eventual opponent drained,
And even when the cavalry does finally show up for the GOP, it bears noting that outside money doesn't go nearly as far as campaign cash. That's because FCC regulations entitle candidates to discounted rates on TV and radio—a benefit that super PACs and party committees don't enjoy.
And that in turn is something to bear in mind when comparing ad spending in dollar figures. For a true apples-to-apples comparison, media professionals rely on metrics like the total number of ads bought, gross ratings points, and share of voice.
• MI-Sen: Actor Hill Harper filed updated financial disclosure reports with the U.S. Senate late last week, a move that came over a month after he blew past his self-imposed Feb. 28 deadline to do so—and more than four months after the Detroit News first reported that Harper improbably claimed he had no bank accounts and earned no income during the prior two years.
The new documents, by contrast, reveal that Harper omitted millions of dollars in investments and income, a failure he blamed on an unnamed former staffer. In addition, Harper continued to earn five-figure speaking fees after announcing his entry into the Democratic primary for Michigan's open Senate seat, despite claiming he'd stopped following the launch of his campaign.
Reporter Melissa Nann Burke cited experts who described Harper's decision to keep accepting paid speaking gigs as "somewhat uncommon" for a political candidate, due to "concerns about potential conflicts of interest."
On the Republican side, Rep. Jack Bergman this week endorsed the GOP frontrunner, former Rep. Mike Rogers.
• IN-08: A trio of well-funded outside groups are taking to the airwaves to derail former Rep. John Hostettler's comeback campaign ahead of a May 7 Republican primary that, until this week, had attracted little outside attention.
Jewish Insider's Marc Rod reported on Wednesday evening that the hawkish pro-Israel organization AIPAC, through its affiliated United Democracy Project, is spending more than $500,000 to air ads charging that the former congressman "is one of the most anti-Israel politicians in America" and "voted against giving aid to Israel over and over again."
AIPAC has not, however, endorsed any Republicans running in the primary to replace retiring GOP Rep. Larry Bucshon in the 8th District, a dark red constituency in southwestern Indiana.
The group began getting involved in Democratic primaries last cycle, but Rod says this is its first intervention in a Republican nomination contest. This also may be its first TV ad that focuses on Israel rather than on other topics.
Hours after the UDP ad became public, the New York Times broke the news Thursday that the Republican Jewish Coalition had booked $1 million in TV time to stop Hostettler, with its first ad set to debut on April 10. The RJC also says it will support one of the former congressman's primary foes, state Sen. Mark Messmer.
RJC head Matt Brooks joined AIPAC in faulting Hostettler's voting record, and he also took issue with a book the ex-congressman self-published in 2008 that argued that Jewish Republicans pushed for the Bush administration to invade Iraq in order to help Israel. Abe Foxman, who was then the head of the Anti-Defamation League, denounced Hostettler's allegation at the time as "the conspiracy theory that keeps on ticking."
Politico's Madison Fernandez flags that a third super PAC, America Leads Action, is also running anti-Hostettler commercials, but there's no word yet on how much it's spending or why it's getting involved. The group, which is funded by North Carolina businessman Jay Faison and Walmart heir Rob Walton, portrays Hostettler as a politician who favored "[t]ax funded raises for himself" and "voted with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats against a balanced budget amendment."
Until this week, the only outside spending reported to the FEC was $364,000 to help Messmer from a group called America's First Freedoms. The state senator is the only sitting elected official among the nine Republicans who are campaigning to succeed Bucshon. Howey Politics wrote Thursday that the primary "appears to be a two-man contest" between Messmer and Hostettler.
• NY-16: Democratic Majority for Israel has publicized an internal from The Mellman Group that gives its endorsed candidate, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a wide 52-35 lead over Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the June 25 Democratic primary. (Pollster Mark Mellman leads both organizations.)
This is the first survey we've seen of the contest for New York's safely blue 16th District that included data on a head-to-head matchup. Last month, Bowman's allies at the Working Families Party publicized a poll from Upswing Research & Strategy that argued that voters aligned with the incumbent's "positions on the war in Gaza" but notably did not include any numbers testing Bowman against Latimer.
Latimer also received an endorsement this week from former Gov. David Paterson, who became the state's first-ever Black chief executive in 2008 after Eliot Spitzer resigned in disgrace.