Christine O'Donnell promotes 30 minute TV spots featuring "real people's stories", but there's a problem. It appears as though no one actually bought the TV time. The deadline for last-minute independent expenditures was October 31st, and for a special airing tonight at 11:30 PM, the media buy would have had to have been done by Friday, latest. I've been through all the independent expenditure reports, and I can't find any record of a huge media buy for O'Donnell.
When I first heard about this, I rolled my eyes, because it assumes that someone is actually willing to drop a whole lot of money for three 30-minute spots on television. Even if it's a local station, it isn't exactly chicken feed to buy up that much time. When a candidate is down 20 points, that seems like a real Hail Mary based in no one's reality but O'Donnell's.
WILMINGTON, Del. — Christine O’Donnell’s GOP Senate campaign is buying three 30-minute television ads for the final stretch, she announced Sunday at a Tea Party Express rally, where she insisted that the race is closer than it seems.
She has purchased the three ads, to air Sunday night and at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Monday, with the financial help of the tea party movement to showcase stories she hears on the campaign trail. “Tell everyone to tune in,” she said. (read more)
O'Donnell's Twitter was full of promises about the show, but just after 11:30, this tweet appeared:
So, no media buys that would be enough for 30 minutes. I'm told that Channel 28 is a leased-access channel on Comcast, for which separate media buys would have to be made for the Dover and Rehoboth area. If they made them, I don't see them in her disclosures, but I'll keep looking.
Either this was an invention of O'Donnell's or someone made a pretty big error and forgot to actually get the time to air the special, OR she was double-crossed. Pick one.
UPDATE: According to CNN,
In the process of trying to motivate her base and convince last minute undecided voters to cast a ballot in her favor, Republican Christine O'Donnell has entered a war of words with a local television executive – and may have lost his vote in the process.
O'Donnell purchased eight 30-minute blocks of air time in Delaware last week, four of them on a local cable network operated by Tim Qualls that broadcasts in northern Delaware. The Senate candidate's campaign planned to run an Obama-style closing argument in the form of a 24-minute commercial meant to highlight O'Donnell's ties to Delaware and build connections with local voters. The ads were scheduled to run at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Qualls' network, as well as a local FOX affiliate.
The article goes on to say that the station owner has not received payment. I'm betting that is because she hasn't paid them.
