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Friday, July 29, 2005
OH-02: Blogosphere Surge Forces GOP Splurge
Posted by Bob BrighamBe part of history, contribute today!
From the Cincinnati Enquirer:
In a sign that the 2nd Congressional District race might be tight, the National Republican Congressional Committee has dumped more than $500,000 into a TV ad campaign attacking Democrat Paul Hackett.The ad buy was estimated at $265,000 in the Cincinnati media market, along with another $250,000 on Huntington, W.Va., stations that cover the eastern end of the seven-county district.
Jean Schmidt's campaign is being dragged down by the Culture of Corruption in the Republican Party. Schmidt was Governor Taft's rubber stamp and is campaigning to be Tom DeLay's rubber stamp.
Democrats, though, believe the TV ad blitz is the result of Hackett's success in raising his own campaign funds through online contributions.Hackett has benefited from a surge of online support in the last week that has brought in, as of Thursday, an estimated $303,000 from more than 5,000 small campaign contributors through a Democratic group called ActBlue.com.
The online buzz for Hackett started last week when Democracy for America, the group founded by Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean endorsed Hackett's campaign in an e-mail to supporters, calling on them to contribute.
Several other liberal-leaning political Web logs, called blogs, urged their readers to contribute to Hackett on July 19, in honor or Blogosphere Day. On that date in 2004, online campaign contributions for Ginny Schrader, a Democratic congressional candidate in Pennsylvania, raised $25,000.
Hackett's online contributions, which increase each minute, surpassed the money raised for Schrader in the first day and continue to grow.
"This has never been done for a congressional candidate before at this level," said Tim Tagaris, a blogger who writes for Ohio Rep. Sherrod Brown's GrowOhio.org blog and, separately, SwingStateProject.com, one of the Web sites that urged online readers to support Hackett.
Hackett's on-line contributions have enabled him to spend far more money than any Democratic candidate in the historically Republican district.
Here is the worst. spin. ever.
But Braun said the help is significant. In the Huntington media market, Braun said, the $250,000 TV ad buy "is incredible. It's like one out of every three commercials that air."Braun said the committee campaign is not an indication that Schmidt is in trouble, but "the first shot in the 2008 (presidential) battle."
No Joe, the Washington Republicans aren't buying one out of every three ads to fire people up for 2008. They're doing this because Schmidt's campaign blew a huge lead in an easy district. This buy was motivated by nothing other than The Fear.
Posted at 07:48 AM in Netroots, Ohio, Open Seats, Site News, Special Elections | Technorati