In the 2012 election, Ohio broadcasters couldn’t sign political advertising contracts fast enough as a seismic shift occurred in American politics, playing out on TV screens and car radios across the state.
Independent political groups with confusing-sounding labels like super PACs, 501(C)(4)s, and 527 organizations singled out Ohio to divide tens of millions of dollars among dozens of broadcasters to lock up airtime.
Their goal: Sway, if not manipulate the famous swing-state voters.
Those groups — funded by rich business people and corporations outside Ohio and working separately from the candidates and political parties — spent at least $28 million here on the presidential election, $38.9 million in the U.S. Senate race, and $18 million on Ohio’s 16 congressional races.
In the hotly contested Senate race alone, Republican strategist Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS aired broadside after broadside against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, spending more than $6 million, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
In fact, outside interests spent more to support Brown’s opponent, Republican Josh Mandel, than did Mandel’s own campaign.
Altogether, that means that outside groups, mostly conservative, spent at least $85 million to sway Ohio voters in the 2012 U.S. races.
Ohioans know something has changed. They have a keen sense that there are more ads and meaner messages. What many don’t know is that in the last six years, corporations and billionaire business magnates have stripped traditional campaigns and political parties of their power.
The rich are keeping their money and controlling the message through their own organizations. With little accountability and little transparency, they deliver messages that shock and dismay the Midwestern psyche.
Ohioans disgusted
Presumably, political consultants spend heavily on dramatic negative TV ads because they do what they’re supposed to: influence voters.
Asked for three words to express their feelings about the ads and Ohioans exude disgust.
Alex Nestor, 21, a student at Ohio University’s Lancaster campus, referred to the ads as “intrusive, ineffective, obnoxious.”
Rosalyn Webber, 48, of Mansfield, called them “pathetic, tired, tacky…. [Rich donors] think Ohioans are stupid, plain and simple. They think that people in Ohio don’t have the sense that God gave geese.”
“Bunch of lies,” said Ron Baker, 76, of Galion.
“I really don’t respect most of the advertising that’s available,” said Jeff Nelson, 64, of Toledo, a field engineer in electronics. “Most of it’s stuff that isn’t totally true. It’s easy to take a sentence or part of a sentence out of context, or to say ‘He voted for that,’ when in fact it was a procedural vote.”
He said he’s likely to grab the remote and switch channels, and rely on his own research on candidates.
Kristina Keeler, 56, of Perrysburg, a preschool teacher, said TV ads are “unhelpful.”
“I despise the amount of money we spend on all of our campaigns. What a waste of money. Put that money to better use,” Keeler said.
She acknowledged that the ads probably work with her, to some extent.
“I have a reaction to an ad on TV, whether it’s patriotic and feel-good or gloom and doom, you can’t help it,” she said.
A Pew Research Center poll showed that nearly three-quarters of Americans say money and influence from outside interests is the “biggest problem with elected officials in Washington.” There was strong public support across party lines to cap contribution limits from individuals and corporations.
The pivotal moment
The January 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission gave First Amendment protection to wealthy individuals, corporations and unions to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money — provided they didn’t directly coordinate with the candidates they were supporting.
Some of the spending is required to be reported to the FEC, and some of it is reported voluntarily. The Campaign Finance Institute, using Federal Election Commission numbers, estimates that in the 10 months following the Citizens United ruling, outside spending on positive ads to support congressional candidates doubled, but more importantly, spending on attack ads increased nearly eightfold.
Without transparency, and without culpability for the candidates, decency was set aside.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, through its website www.opensecrets.org, total outside spending nationwide in the 2012 presidential race leaned heavily Republican.
Independent spending nationwide was $424.4 million supporting Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and $145 million supporting Democratic President Barack Obama.
However, the sources of the money often are a mystery, which is why it’s sometimes known as “dark money.”
A good example of how independent expenditures influence elections while leaving a minimal public trail is that of Americans for Prosperity, the 501(c) organization funded by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.
Look up its 2012 expenditures in opensecrets.org and one line comes up: $33,542,051 spent against Obama.
AFP is not required to disclose donors to the FEC. Through cross-referencing with nonprofit organizations’ tax returns, the Center for Responsive Politics has identified 66 donors, all of them organizations. The biggest contributor, with $65 million donated since 2010, is Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, accounting for about two-thirds of AFP’s total donations of $96.9 million. Freedom Partners is controlled by the Koch Brothers.
No bread crumbs
How much of that was spent in Ohio is not reported to the Federal Election Commission, and thus difficult to gauge.
Federal law requires broadcasters to provide public access to all their political advertising contracts, and so the campaigns’ media consultants collect the information through constant contact with the television and radio stations in all of the nation’s media markets. Those records only must be kept two years.
Since 2014, broadcasters have been required to post the information on the Internet, improving the ability of the public and the news media to find out who’s spending how much.
It’s still a data-gathering nightmare. Two large organizations contacted by the Blade refused to divulge information about the 2012 presidential campaign.
The Washington Post in 2012 hired a media firm to collect data and reported that the total spending in Ohio on the 2012 election — including candidates and outside groups — was $78 million in favor of Romney and $72 million in favor of Obama, for a total of $150 million.
That made Ohio the third most expensive battleground state, after Florida, with $173 million, and Virginia, $151 million.
Separating the outside spending is harder. National Public Radio reported that independent political groups spent $28.3 million between April 10 and Oct. 10 in Ohio — with the most intense month of spending still to go.
Given that Obama was re-elected with a comfortable margin in Ohio, one could ask whether the barrage of anti-Democratic advertising was worth it.
Reportedly, the Koch brothers have taken stock of their political spending after its lack of success in 2012 and 2014.
The publication Politico.com reported that the brothers have taken their spending “deeper” — away from TV ads and into staff, training, data analysis and building a voter database.
In January, Charles Koch held a meeting with 500 supporters at his estate in Indian Wells, Calif., and invited journalists from USA Today, BuzzFeed News, Bloomberg, NBC News, and Palm Springs Desert Sun to observe.
“This isn’t some secret cabal,” Koch said. “We have ideas that will make America better …”
For University of Akron senior Dominic Caruso, though, the rich are using their money to silence the people.
“They don’t want the people to talk. They want their money to talk,” he said. “It’s unfair. I don’t have equal speech anymore because I don’t have the money to make an ad. So I don’t have equal speech to these wealthy people.”
Contact Tom Troy at tomtroy@theblade.com, 419-724-6058 and on Twitter @TomFTroy. Also contributing to this story were the Akron Beacon Journal and Gannett Ohio newspapers.