Assuming that trend changes, it should prove an interesting ride
for Mr. Ryan, who isn't accustomed to being a national -- or at
least, a 70-market -- punching bag. The beneficiary of comfortable
re-elections since his first win in 1998, he has cut very few
campaign ads himself and has been the subject of even fewer. More
ads are released during a quiet week in this presidential race than
have aired, total, in Ryan's last several races.
His 2011 proposal to transform Medicare from a defined-benefit
to a defined-contribution system was seized upon by Democrats and
weakly defended by Republicans when it was introduced, but the
timing of it, in the midst of the non-election year instead of
closer to Election Day, kept Democrats from unleashing a barrage of
ads to make political hay of it.
His selection won't lead to substantially more spending on
advertising with two exceptions.
After months of on-and-off air assaults by GOP groups in
Wisconsin, Mr. Ryan's home state, Republicans will surely launch a
more sustained offensive in order to exploit their new potential
advantage in a state that had been leaning toward Mr. Obama, and
Democrats may now need to advertise to defend their lead.
And Florida, which has seen less advertising compared to the
other seven true battleground states, will now become ground zero
in the war over Medicare. In a recent reminder of just how
sensitive the issue is in this state, a May 2012 US Chamber of
Commerce ad accusing Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of supporting
"$500 billion in Medicare cuts to fund" the President's healthcare
law had Nelson's campaign lawyer demanding that Florida stations
reject the ad. Instead, they aired it. Nelson was one of 21
Democratic lawmakers around the country targeted by that
campaign.
In just the four months since April 10, when Senator Rick
Santorum dropped his bid for the Republican nomination and the
Obama v. Romney die was cast, Kantar Media CMAG has tracked an
astounding 79,000 spot occurrences in nonpresidential
races around the country that contained messages critical of
President Obama. Only 4,000 spots contained positive mentions of
him.
Driving this huge 79,000 figure are derogatory references to
"Obamacare," which has become the Republican symbol of alleged
runaway government spending and overreach. The attacks have been so
utterly pervasive that earlier in August, "Obamacare" was the
subject of dueling TV ads by Republican candidates for an office
not exactly central to the issue: secretary of state of
Missouri.
By comparison, until now, we've seen no spots in nonpresidential
races that have been critical of Mr. Romney, a development that
typically happens further into the fall. As damaging as the Obama
campaign's Bain-based attacks may have been to Romney's own
standing, they haven't provided Democratic candidates and groups
involved in Senate and House races with an issue to throw in the
faces of their Republican opponents. Mr. Ryan provides Democrats
with an unexpectedly early-arriving advertising call to arms.
Given that Romney-Ryan starts off at a polling deficit,
Republicans had better hope their negative-to-positive ad ratio is
better than 20 to one.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Wilner is VP of
Kantar
Media's CMAG, which tracks and analyzes broadcast TV
advertising content, placement and spend.
