In Midterm TV Ad Wars, Sticker Shock Costs Republicans

Football fans in Las Vegas tuning into the Raiders game on Oct. 2 had to sit through multiple political ads, including one from Nevada’s endangered Democratic senator and another from a Republican super PAC trying to defeat her.

The ads were each 30 seconds — but the costs were wildly different.

The Democratic senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, paid $21,000. The Republican super PAC paid $150,000.

That $129,000 disparity for a single ad — an extra $4,300 per second — is one sizable example of how Republican super PACs are paying a steep premium to compete on the airwaves with Democratic candidates, a trend that is playing out nationwide with cascading financial consequences for the House and Senate battlefield. Hour after hour in state after state, Republicans are paying double, triple, quadruple and sometimes even 10 times more than Democrats for ads on the exact same programs.

One reason is legal and beyond Republicans’ control. But the other is linked to the weak fund-raising of Republican candidates this year and the party’s heavy dependence on billionaire-funded super PACs.

Political candidates are protected under a federal law that allows them to pay the lowest price available for broadcast ads. Super PACs have no such protections, and Republicans have been more reliant on super PACs this year because their candidates have had trouble fund-raising. So Democrats have been the ones chiefly benefiting from the mandated low pricing, and Republicans in many top races have been at the mercy of the exorbitant rates charged by television stations as the election nears.

The issue may seem arcane. But strategists in both parties say it has become hugely consequential in midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress.

From Labor Day through early this week, Senate Republican super PACs and campaigns spent more than their opponents on the airwaves in key races in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New Hampshire, according to data from the media-tracking firm AdImpact. But when measured in rating points — a metric of how many people saw the ads — the Democratic ads were seen more times in each of those states, according to two Democratic officials tracking media purchases.

In other words, Democrats got more for less.

“One of the challenges we face in taking back the House is the eye-popping differences between what Democrat incumbents and Republican challengers are raising — and what that affords them in terms of different advertising rates,” said Dan Conston, who heads the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with House Republican leadership that has raised $220 million and is one of the nation’s biggest television spenders.

The price differences can be jarring.

In Ohio, Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate candidate, paid $650 for a recent ad on the 6 a.m. newscast of the local Fox affiliate. The leading Republican super PAC paid $2,400.

In Nevada, Ms. Cortez Masto paid $720 for an ad on CBS’s Sunday news show. Another Republican super PAC, the Club for Growth, paid $12,000.

And in Arizona, Senator Mark Kelly has been paying $2,000 per spot on the evening news on the ABC affiliate. A Republican super PAC is paying $5,000.

An analysis by The New York Times of Federal Communications Commission records, along with interviews with media buyers in both parties, shows just how much the different prices that candidates and super PACs pay is influencing the 2022 midterm landscape.

“What matters at the end of the day is what number of people see an ad, which isn’t measured in dollars,” said Tim Cameron, a Republican strategist and media buyer, referring to the rating-points metric.

The partisan split between advertising purchased by candidates versus super PACs is vast.

In Senate races, Democratic candidates have reserved or spent nearly $170 million more than Republican candidates in the general election on television, radio and digital ads, according to AdImpact.

The price that super PACs pay is driven by supply and demand, and television stations charge Republicans and Democrats the same prices when they book at the same time.

So Democrats have super PACs that pay higher rates, too. But the party is less reliant on them. Republicans have a nearly $95 million spending edge over Democrats among super PACs and other outside groups involved in Senate races, according to AdImpact. That money just doesn’t go nearly as far.

Several candidates who were weak at raising funds won Republican nominations in key Senate races, including in New Hampshire, Arizona and Ohio, and that has hobbled the party.

“We’re working hard to make up the gap where we can,” said Steven Law, the head of the leading Senate Republican super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund.

But Democrats — buoyed by robust donations through ActBlue, the Democratic online donation-processing platform — are announcing eye-popping money hauls ahead of Saturday’s third-quarter filing deadline that are helping them press their advantage. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia raised $26.3 million. In Pennsylvania, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Senate nominee, raised $22 million. Mr. Ryan raised $17.2 million. Ms. Cortez Masto raised $15 million.

“It’s a simple fact that candidates pay lower rates than outside groups, which means Democrats’ ActBlue cash tsunami could wipe out an underfunded Republican,” Mr. Law said.

Republicans are hardly cash-poor. The Senate Leadership Fund alone has reserved more than $170 million in ads since Labor Day and raised more than $1 million per day in the third quarter. But the ad rates are eroding that money’s buying power.

In the top nine Senate battlegrounds that drew significant outside spending, Republicans spent about 6.66 percent more on ads than Democrats from Labor Day through earlier this week, according to one of the Democratic officials tracking the media buys. But the Democratic money had gone further when measured by rating points, outpacing Republican ad viewership by 8 percent.

In Nevada, for instance, the super PAC that paid $150,000 for the single commercial on Oct. 2, Our American Century, has been funded chiefly by a $10 million contribution by Steve Wynn, the casino magnate. Yet for a comparable price of $161,205, Ms. Cortez Masto was able to air 79 ads that week on the same station: daily spots each on the local news, daytime soap operas, “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” as well as in prime time — plus the Oct. 2 football ad, Federal Communications Commission records show.

Las Vegas is perhaps the most congested market for political ads in the nation, with multiple contested House races, a swing Senate contest and a tight governor’s election, and some ballot measures. Both Democratic and Republican media-buying sources said the rates for super PACs had been up to 10 times that of candidates in some recent weeks.

In a recent one-week period, Ms. Cortez Masto spent $197,225 on 152 spots on the local Fox station, an average price of $1,300 per 30 seconds. The Club for Growth Action, a Republican super PAC, spent $473,000 for only 52 spots — an average price of nearly $9,100 per 30 seconds.

Republicans feel they have no choice but to pony up.

“Republicans are facing a hard-money deficit, and it’s up to groups like Club for Growth Action to help make up the difference in these key races,” said David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth.

Some strategists have privately pressed super PACs to invest more heavily in digital advertising, where candidate rates are not protected. Super PACs pay similar amounts and sometimes can even negotiate discounts because of their volume of ads. But old habits, and the continued influence of television on voters, means much of the funds are still going to broadcast.

“Super PACs have one charter: to win races. And so they spend there because they have to,” said Evan Tracey, a Republican media buyer. “They’re not running a business in the sense that shareholders are going to be outraged that they have to spend more for the same asset. It’s a cost of doing business.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has faced financial problems this year, cut millions of its reserved television “independent expenditures,” which are booked at the same rate as super PACs. Instead, in a creative and penny-pinching move, the committee rebooked some of that money in concert with Senate campaigns, splitting costs through a complex mechanism that limits what the ads can say — candidates can be mentioned during only half the airtime — but receives the better, candidate ad rates.

Still, in Arizona, some of the canceled reservations from top Republican groups have further exacerbated the ad-rate disparity in the Senate race. That is because the party gave back early reservations only to have other super PACs step in — and pay even more.

For instance, the Senate committee originally had reserved two ads for that Oct. 2 football game for $30,000 each and the Senate Leadership Fund had reserved another for $30,000. All three were canceled.

Instead, a new Republican super PAC, the Sentinel Action Fund, booked two ads during the same game but had to pay $100,000 because rates had risen — forking over $10,000 more for one fewer ad.

Data from one Republican media-buying firm showed that in Arizona, ads supporting Mr. Kelly, the Democrat, amounted to 84 percent of what viewers saw even though the pro-Kelly side accounted for only 74 percent of the dollars spent.

The Sentinel Action Fund was paying $1,775 per rating point — a measurement of viewership — while Mr. Kelly’s campaign was spending around $300 per point, according to the Republican data. Blake Masters, Mr. Kelly’s Republican opponent, was receiving a price close to Mr. Kelly’s but could afford only a tiny fraction of the ad budget (around $411,000, compared with Mr. Kelly’s $3.3 million for a recent two-week period).

“The disparity between Democratic campaigns’ strong fund-raising and Republican campaigns’ weak fund-raising is forcing the G.O.P. super PACs to make difficult decisions even though there continues to be a deluge of outside money on their side,” said David Bergstein, the communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

In Ohio, the Senate Leadership Fund announced in August that it was making a $28 million television and radio reservation to prop up J.D. Vance, the best-selling author and first-time Republican candidate who emerged from the primary with a limited fund-raising apparatus.

But despite outspending the Democratic candidate in dollars — the super PAC paid $3 million last week for ads, compared with Mr. Ryan’s nearly $1.5 million — Republicans were still at a disadvantage: Mr. Ryan’s campaign was sometimes getting more airtime, according to media buyers and F.C.C. records.

The Republican super PAC was paying four or five times more than Mr. Ryan for ads on the same shows. And the sticker shock on big sports events is the most intense: On WJW, the Fox affiliate in Cleveland, last week’s Big Ten college football game cost Mr. Ryan $3,000 — and $30,000 for the Senate Leadership Fund.