This week, Clinton won the last of the Democratic primaries in Washington, D.C., had a 90-minute private meeting with her rival Bernie Sanders and then started buying up ads in battleground states. That includes you, Colorado.
Politico reports that Clinton is about to unleash "TV hell" on Trump (and depending on how you feel about political ads, maybe "TV hell" on viewers as well). The "ad barrage" starts today, Thursday, and will join attack ads that the Democratic SuperPAC Priorities USA Action already has on the air. At least one of the ads is an attack ad on Trump, but others will be softer ads with a positive focus on Clinton, who has higher unfavorable ratings than her campaign would like.
The ad campaign sends a message not just to voters, but to the Trump campaign, Politico says:
By reserving time in key swing states — at least Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia — the Clinton camp is sending an unmistakable message to the presumptive GOP nominee that it intends to press into traditionally Republican territory without spending too much time worrying about defending traditionally Democratic destinations where Trump insists he will compete, said a handful of high-level Democrats close to the Clinton effort.
(One of those high-level Democrats calls the Trump campaign a "dumpster fire" and compares Clinton to Steph Curry.)
Television stations have to report political ad buys to the Federal Communications Commission, and sure enough, you can see those ad buys pop up Wednesday on KUSA (Channel 9) and its sister KTVD (Channel 20), KMGH (Channel 7) and KDVR (Channel 31). Those filings show Clinton's campaign committee "Hillary for America" spent more than $454,000 on some 527 political ads that are scheduled to run mostly between today and the end of the month, with some buys extending into early July.
We hear so much about money in politics, that an estimated $4.4 billion will be spent on TV ads in this campaign before it's over, that I found myself wondering: Is $454,000 really a lot of money for political ad buys? That's like one nice — but not even the nicest — house in Denver.
Well, according to the latest campaign finance reports, Trump only has $2.4 million in cash on hand compared to Clinton's $30 million, so Clinton's two-week-and-change ad buy in one state is nearly a fifth of all Trump's available money.
Trump said recently that he doesn't need to raise a lot of money or spend a lot on ads. Per Bloomberg News:
“There’s no reason to raise that,” Trump said about raising $1 billion. “I just don’t think I need nearly as much money as other people need because I get so much publicity. I get so many invitations to be on television. I get so many interviews, if I want them.”
