Presidential Campaigns and Allies Plan $500 Million in TV and Radio Ads
From The New York Times:
In the home stretch of the presidential election, both the Harris and Trump campaigns, along with their allied Super PACs, are planning a significant ad blitz over the remaining few weeks. Groups supporting Vice President Harris plan to spend over $332 million, compared to $192 million in spending planned by former President Trump’s allied groups. Direct spending by the campaigns also leans in favor of Harris, with her campaign expected to spend $109 million to Trump’s $91 million. Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state, is expected to see $133 million in political ad spending.
Conservative group asks FEC to probe effort to promote spoiler candidates
From ABC News:
A secretive group known as the “Patriots Run Project” – which scouted, recruited, and promoted individuals to run as third-party spoiler candidates in competitive congressional races across the country – is now the focus of a complaint accusing them of violating campaign finance law. The apparent aim of Patriots Run was to have Trump-aligned candidates run as independents to draw away votes from the official Republican party candidates. The conservative organization Americans for Public Trust argues in their complaint that Patriots Run was intending to influence the outcome of an election, and should therefore have registered as a political committee. Instead, almost no information is available about the group, besides a P.O. box in a UPS store located in Washington, D.C. Some Democratic consulting firms, however, helped circulate petitions or conduct polling for candidates backed by Patriots Run Project.
Who’s paying for all those political ads? Bloomberg, a Mellon, ‘dark money’ PACs and more
From WESA:
With Pennsylvania appearing to be the crucial swing state in the upcoming presidential election, campaigns, PACs, and dark money groups from across the country are pouring money into political ads in Pittsburgh and across the rest of the Commonwealth. Analysis by PublicSource and WESA, an NPR affiliate, found that ad spending in the Pittsburgh area is dominated by spending linked to a few out-of-state billionaire megadonors, most notably Timothy Mellon of Wyoming and Michael Bloomberg of New York.
Jeff Clements: The Constitution’s answer to billionaire money in politics
In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
This editorial by American Promise CEO Jeff Clements reflects on the role of political spending in our elections, on the twentieth Constitution Day in America. He argues that it is time for another “amendment era,” a period in American history where citizens work to amend our Constitution to address the greatest issues of the day. He calls on Pennsylvanians to “honor the drafters at the original Philadelphia Convention” and join the cross-partisan movement backing the For Our Freedom Amendment.
