Get ready for a record-breaking season of political ads flooding the broadcast airwaves and your streaming services. Democrat Abigail Spanberger will be spending almost a million dollars a week from now until Election Day. That's according to political ad spending data posted to the Virginia Public Access Project.
"It's kind of a sad statement about how things work because if candidates are required to pass this test of being able to raise all this money," says Jennifer Victor at George Mason University. "What we wind up with is an incentive structure where we have all these political consultants and media consultants. We've created a giant industry around this that isn't necessarily serving us as a polity in terms of helping us learn about candidates."
People may be cutting the cord, but broadcast TV is still where all the big money is says Wes Bellamy at Virginia State University.
"Both campaigns are looking to spend money to get the word out," according to Bellamy. "And now is around the time you see, early September is around the time you see campaigns ramp up and even more spending to come and even more of the messages being shoved down our proverbial throats."
Campaign finance numbers show Spanberger has been outspending her Republican opponent by two-to-one, although Republican Winsome Earle-Sears recently announced that BET founder Robert Johnson is donating half a million dollars to her campaign for governor.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
