Two billionaires seeking the Democrat presidential nomination are shattering the record books, and not in a good way.
“Together, Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg have poured nearly $200 million into television and digital advertising alone, with the former New York mayor spending an unprecedented $120 million in the roughly three weeks since he joined the presidential race,” POLITICO reports.
“We’ve never seen spending like this in a presidential race,” Jim McLaughlin, a Republican political strategist who worked as a consultant for Bloomberg’s mayoral bids in New York, tells POLITICO. “He has a limitless budget.”
This kind of spending would normally completely reset the presidential field and send opposing candidates heading for the exits.
Instead, virtually nothing has happened. Both candidates are mired in single digits in the polls, even in states where they are saturating the airwaves.
POLITICO reports Steyer has “spent nearly $37 million in Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire — much of it on digital ads. Since joining the race in July, he’s more than doubled the combined ad spending of Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the early states.”
He has little to show for it. Despite saturating the airwaves and the Internet with ads in South Carolina, Steyer is in fifth place with just five percent of the vote.
He’s averaging just 2.5 percent in Iowa, 3.5 percent in Nevada and 2.7 percent in New Hampshire in Real Clear Politics’ aggregate of polls.
Bloomberg’s billions aren’t paying off either. He’s averaging just 1.3 percent in Iowa and a WBUR/MassINC poll of New Hampshire shows him at only 2 percent. A Charleston Post and Courier poll of New Hampshire shows him at just 3 percent.
Republican political consultant Christian Heiens tells POLITICO the strategy reminds him of that attempted by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who spent $55 million on early TV ads in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, only to drop out in February after finishing sixth in Iowa and fourth in New Hampshire and fourth in South Carolina.
AAN Staff
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