Connecticut Local Politics

The NRCC reserved more than $17 million in ads for 26 races in two bunches in the last two weeks (here and here) (compare to the $53 million for 55 races reserved by the DCCC). Conspicuously missing from the NRCC’s reservations? CT.

As I noted last October, the NRCC is in dire financial shape compared to the DCCC. Since then, the situation has improved somewhat for the NRCC (they are no longer in the red), but they are still far behind the DCCC’s CoH, $56.5 million to $14 million (July numbers, August numbers should be available in the next two weeks or so). In October, I speculated that the NRCC didn’t have enough money to go on offense in CT and would likely only be able to spend money in CT to protect Chris Shays. It seems I was too conservative - the NRCC now seems unlikely to spend any money in CT (at least on media buys) unless something drastically changes.

Reserving advertising a few months out from the election locks in a lower rate; the reverse is also true - waiting until the last minute will result in higher rates (the reservations are not guarantees; the committee could decide not to use the reservations). Given the NRCC’s financial situation (they just reserved more in ads than they had on hand at the end of July), coming into a district late is unlikely and may not be an option at all come November.

So why did the NRCC take a pass on CT-04 and CT-05? There are only three possibilities that I can think of (feel free to ad more below in the comments):

1. They are confident that they can win these seats without spending any money.
2. They are sure they are going to lose anyway, so why throw good money after bad.
3. The candidates in those districts either have enough money on their own (Shays) or have gotten enough national help already so as to be on their own (Cappiello - fundraisers from President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and Minority Leader John Boehner), and the committee has to spend its meager resources on races that need the money more.

Given the CoH situation in the four campaigns and the lack of polling in both of these races, possibilities #1 and #2 seem clearly wrong (although I would buy at least a dash of #2, combined with a healthy amount of #3 in the NRCC’s thinking about CT-05). The NRCC’s lack of an ad reservation in CT should be read as a message to the Shays and Cappiello campaigns: from here on out you are on your own. I know I for one will miss the Coffee Talk with Taliban messaging (and of course all of the above is only referring to media buys, so if you are hoping for a mailer like the linked, keep your fingers crossed, it could happen!)…

Note: On the Democratic side, the DCCC has reserved about $700k for ads and last week dropped about $30k on a mailing in CT-04. So far, the DCCC has not put any independent expenditures into play in CT-05 (lending a little credibility to the dash of #2 theory above).