Top states by media spending in U.S. House races
Texas' primary was March 1. The runoff is May 24. Dollars in thousands.
Campaign Trail
Political ad spending is bigger in Texas—way bigger
The Lone Star State is No. 1 by a wide margin in U.S. House race media outlay, with $11.6 million spent so far, according to Ad Age Datacenter analysis
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas and challenger Jessica Cisneros.
Credit:
Henry Cuellar via Twitter; Jessica Cisneros via YouTube
Credit: Infographic by Ad Age.
Media spending on political advertising by U.S. House of Representatives candidates from Texas is dwarfing that seen in every other state in the union so far, according to the latest Ad Age Campaign Ad Scorecard analysis.
Campaign Ad Scorecard is part of Ad Age’s Campaign Trail coverage, a project of Ad Age Datacenter, led by Director of Data Management Kevin Brown in partnership with Kantar/CMAG. (See more at AdAge.com/CampaignTrail.)
An executive summary of—and essential context for—the charts above:
• Spending on U.S. House campaigns across TV, radio and digital comes in at $11.6 million in Texas—a tally that includes booked spending by campaigns and the political action committees that support them from Dec. 28, 2021, through Election Day as of March 9, 2022. (As we note in the fine print below, some candidates and political action committees began spending—some significantly—in 2021, but for the purposes of our analysis, we’re tracking all candidates’ spending from Dec. 28 forward.)
• Republicans account for $6 million of the Texas total, vs. $5.5 million for Democrats.
• So far, only two other states—Georgia and Oregon—have crossed the million-dollar threshold, and they’ve done so just barely during our measurement window. Georgia is at $1.3 million, and Oregon is at $1.1 million.
• Of the top five U.S. congressional districts by media spending on political advertising, four of them are in Texas (the fifth is in Oregon).
• What’s so special about Texas when it comes to ad spending on House races? There’s an easy, two-part answer that has to do with sheer size and timing. The state, with a population of 29.1 million, has 38 U.S. House districts—up from 36 in 2020, thanks to the 2020 U.S. Census. And it has an unusually front-loaded election cycle— with a primary that already happened on March 1, and a runoff slated for May 24 for races in which no candidate scored more than 50% of the vote in the primary.
• The more nuanced answer has to do with the temperature of Texas politics—and the national attention the Lone Star State has drawn over the past year thanks to the passage of controversial new laws related to voting and abortion.
• In theory, Texas is on its way to turning “purple”—i.e., it’s a red state that’s been shifting blue due to demographic trends—but as of today, 23 of Texas’ U.S. House seats are held by Republicans vs. 13 by Democrats. And regardless of how the slate of candidates from both parties shakes out after May 24, there is the additional complicating factor of recent redistricting: The formerly reliably blue 15th congressional district in Texas has been redrawn in such a way as to make a GOP win there in November all but certain. (The state’s new 37th and 38th congressional districts are in Austin and Houston, and are likely to go to, respectively, a Democrat and a Republican.)
• Texas also has seen some remarkable drama among some of its House races. Most notably, on March 2, U.S. Rep. Van Taylor (R-Plano) ended his reelection campaign after getting 49% of the primary vote in the third congressional district on March 1. “About a year ago,” he confessed in an email to supporters, “I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world. I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life.” Politicians admitting to affairs in 2022 isn’t necessarily surprising, but Taylor’s was truly shocking given his reported choice of extramarital mate: Tania Joya, who The Texas Tribune notes “is known as a former jihadist who was once married to a commander for the Islamic State. Tabloids have referred to her as ‘ISIS bride.’” News of the affair was reported just days before the primary by far-right sites National File and Breitbart News.
• Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo) finished just 807 votes ahead of Jessica Cisneros in the 28th congressional district primary on March 1. He’s a nine-term congressman who will now have to face off against a challenger from his own party on May 24—with the added wrinkle that Cisneros, a 28-year-old immigration lawyer, served as an intern in Cuellar’s congressional office in 2014. (She first ran against him in 2020, but he prevailed by a margin of 2,700 votes.) If that wasn’t drama enough, Cuellar’s home was raided by the FBI in January “as part of a federal investigation into the country of Azerbaijan and a group of U.S. businessmen who have ties to the country,” as NBC News reported at the time.
