Between Obama vs. Romney for President, Brown vs. Mandel for Senator, and Goldhammer vs. Lima for Best Saturday Morning Sports Talker, Cleveland’s docket of important decisions this fall is brimming like Frank Russo’s closet. With Ohio’s swing-state status, that has meant an avalanche of political ads popping up on your TV during commercial breaks of Maury.
According Wells Fargo and the Washington Post (via NewsNet5), Cleveland’s now far and away the number one target of political ad dough, outpacing L.A. Over $17 million of funds had been dumped square in the 216 demographic through June, and millions more have funneled in through July, all helpfully boiling down complex issues like the economy into 30-second bits of misinformation and flame-throwing. Lucky us.
Some of the down and dirty numbers:
The L.A. dollars dried up in July, while the Cleveland spending did not, increasing another $2.7 million from June 24 through July 8 pushing the northern Ohio media market into a tie for first with L.A. with $20.5 million each, according to the Wells Fargo data.
Beyond that, the Washington Post’s analysis of campaign spending shows in the two weeks since July 8 an additional $2.3 million has been spent in Cleveland, none in Los Angeles giving Cleveland the clear front runner status for dollars spent on television.
“I think Ohio is one of a handful, maybe even two or three states,” said President Barack Obama in a July 16, interview with Newschannel5, “where if we win here, we’re likely to win.”
As a result, both camps are fighting hard for the state and the Cleveland television market provides them with the opportunity to reach a third of the voters who will cast ballots this November.
Through July 8, the Wells Fargo report finds $648 million had been spent on television nationwide with that number expected to balloon to $2.65 billion by campaign’s end.
Money, perhaps, better spent on buying everyone a lollipop. Or, ya know, rethinking campaign finance. One or the other.
In a bit of good news: Goldhammer and Lima seem to have waged the most honorable campaigns so far.
This article appears in Jul 25-31, 2012.
We are number one at yet another thing! Yes! We are also ranked number one at having the most potential of a large, industrial city. That’s right folks. Our infrastructure and people are mass energy at rest and can be converted over to one of the best cities of the future. Our infrastructure and manufactering knowledge and our wonderful and productive Great Lake Erie are destined to be a huge winner of the entire world. We are still a secret so don’t go telling everyone until we get some of our jobs for our own Clevelanders…God knows we deserve them! And not just minimum wage crap. We are going to have good manufacturing jobs here soon….I promise.
Recovery will become reality when crooked politicians are jailed and labor unions recognize that Free Enterprise and not socialism will make it happen.
Cleveland made huge progress when the corruption got cleaned out of the county, and we were able to stop our decline. Now we are working to bring this city back – the worst is behind us, good things for Cleveland on the horizon now that we’re not shooting ourselves in the foot over and over and over again.