Slow start to Landrieu's runoff campaign
Sen. Mary Landrieu's overtime bid to win re-election began with a decidedly sluggish start, as Republican opponent Bill Cassidy and his allies last week pummeled her — effectively uncontested — with hundreds of television advertisements.
Landrieu's campaign didn't air any TV ads during the four days immediately following Nov. 4's general election, when she earned a plurality of the vote but failed to break 50 percent, which triggered a Dec. 6 runoff with Cassidy.
Not until Sunday, Nov. 9, did Landrieu's campaign return to TV after a sustained advertising push that abruptly ended on Election Day, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data from Kantar Media/CMAG, an ad tracking service.
When it did, the campaign aired a modest 70 ads between Sunday and Monday, Kantar Media/CMAG data indicates — although the messages were biting, lampooning Cassidy as an incoherent bumbler unable to string a sentence together.
Meanwhile, super PACs, political party committees and other organizations that had together run thousands of ads during the general election phase in support of Landrieu were nowhere to be found on Louisiana's airwaves after Election Day. And the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee reportedly canceled its scheduled ad buys buoying Landrieu.
Cassidy's campaign, in contrast, ran nearly 700 TV ads from Nov. 5 through Nov. 8. And the National Republican Senatorial Committee aired about 350 TV ads from Nov. 5 to Nov. 8 blasting Landrieu.
Meanwhile, Freedom Partners Action Fund, a super PAC backed by the political network of billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, sponsored another 175 anti-Landrieu TV ads during that timeframe.
That's a marked change from earlier in the race, when Landrieu ruled the airwaves.
There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.
This story is part of Primary Source. Primary Source keeps you up-to-date on developments in the post-Citizens United world of money in politics. Click here to read more stories in this blog.
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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
