The airwaves are being flooded with political ads, but many of them are not from the candidates or their campaigns.
Campaigns tend to have political ads that celebrate their candidates or maybe attack an opponent. But those ads are nothing like a PAC attack, which often go for the jugular – attacking candidates for not showing up to public meetings or having a fake family.
Democratic strategist Ben Tribbett says it's important to remember the firewall between candidates and the PACs who love them.
"One side of the organization works directly with candidates, and the other side works for independent expenditures like this," Tribbett says. "And their ads are always sort of the creative side of probably what a candidate would like to say but doesn't want to put their own name on it."
Jeff Ryer is a Trump campaign spokesman in Virginia, and he says PACs are playing the game with a different set of rules.
"The challenge for the PACs is is that they have to get the most bang for their buck, and the reason why is while candidates are allowed seriously discounted advertisements, the PACs pay retail," Ryer explains. "And that usually means that they have to both raise more and spend more even if they end up with less."
The clear winner in all the TV ad wars? The television stations. All the attack ads mean windfall profits, especially for the Hampton Roads media market and the Washington D.C. media market, which includes Northern Virginia.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
