Obama Super-PAC Plans $30 Million Battleground Ad Blitz

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/PrioritiesUSAaction">Priorities USA Action</a>.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Priorities USA Action, the super-PAC backstopping President Obama’s presidential campaign, isn’t about to let the GOP money machine steamroll the president this fall. To bolster Obama, Priorities is ramping its anti-Romney campaign by buying up $30 million in broadcast and cable TV time in six crucial battleground states—Colorado, Iowa, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the Washington Post reports.

This ad buy is arguably Priorities’ most crucial of the 2012 cycle. Obama’s road to victory in November runs through these six battleground states. And the GOP’s biggest outside groups, including the pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future and dark-money groups Americans for Prosperity and Crossroads GPS, are pumping tens of millions in anti-Obama ads in these states. Obama will need all the reinforcements he can get—that’s where Priorities comes into play.

Here’s more on the buy from the Post:

[Ad buy] sources would not indicate whether this was the totality of the ad spending Priorities USA Action would make on the election or whether this was the first flight of a broader buy. The group, in coordination with the Service Employees International Union, is currently funding Spanish-language ads in Colorado, Florida and Nevada—an effort they say will continue.

Priorities USA Action, which is run by former White House aides Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney, has raised $16 million this year—as of the end of June—and $21 million since the start of 2011. It recently received a $1 million donation from actor Morgan Freeman. The group says it has another $20 million in commitments.

Those fundraising figures are dwarfed by the activity of Republican super-PACs and other conservative-aligned outside groups led by American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which has pledged to spend $300 million on the 2012 election.

Priorities’ fight against GOP groups is an uphill battle. In the super-PAC cash race, GOP-aligned super-PACs have raised nearly $219 million compared to $77 million for Democratic-aligned super-PACs, according to the Sunlight Foundation. For some perspective, the largest GOP super-PAC, the pro-Romney group Restore Our Future, has raised more money than every Democratic super-PAC combined.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate