TV Ad Spending Soars as Messages Turn Shrill

The major presidential candidates, parties and interest groups are well on their way to surpassing $500 million in television advertising spending by election day -- smashing the record of four years ago -- as President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry continue to tear into each other on the airwaves in 14 states, an independent report showed Monday.

In hot spots like Tampa, Fla., Cleveland and Philadelphia, hundreds of campaign ads are pelting TV viewers every day. But the storm is almost as intense in Las Vegas. There, Bush lobbed 520 ads onto local stations last week in a quest to keep Nevada’s five electoral votes in his column, while Kerry and the Democratic Party were on the air 773 times.

Obscure outside groups also are muscling into battleground markets in hopes of tipping the election. And the tone of the ads -- already sharp -- is turning piercingly negative.

“You’re going to see candidates try to turn up the volume as loud as they can,” said Evan Tracey, an analyst at TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group, who has been tracking the TV ad battle for The Times. “Advertising is being used to push undecideds into making up their minds.”

Monday’s report, examining ad placement from Oct. 10 through Saturday, contradicted the notion that the electoral battlefield was shrinking to as few as eight states. Bush and Kerry were still jousting fiercely for states like New Hampshire, West Virginia, Maine and Oregon, which some political observers had thought were edging onto the periphery of the final election showdown. Those states account for 20 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

Ten other states are also hotly contested, with a combined 131 electoral votes at stake: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Whether Bush would compete on TV for states like New Jersey, which he visited Monday, was unclear. So far he has not given any sign that he would be willing to go on the air in the hugely expensive market of New York just to woo northern New Jersey voters. Democrats count the state’s 15 electoral votes as an anchor for Kerry, despite Bush’s surprisingly strong showing in recent polls.

What is not in doubt is that the spending in major TV markets will dwarf the estimated $200 million logged in the 2000 campaign. Monday’s report found that spending since March 3 had exceeded $478 million in the 100 largest TV markets.

And that doesn’t include what the two sides are spending on airtime in 110 smaller TV markets or on radio spots, mass mailings and Internet ads.

On the Republican side, the ads are relentlessly negative. Spots explaining Bush’s plans for a second term -- relatively scarce all year long -- are now almost nonexistent. Instead, Bush, the Republican National Committee and others are painting Kerry as a liberal who can’t be trusted with domestic and foreign policy.

Little-known groups also are pitching in. One, Softer Voices, aired a pro-Bush spot in Toledo, Ohio, and Pittsburgh. It showed a view of the Earth from space and telescoped down to images of children playing in a field -- as a narrator talked ominously about terrorist threats.

On the Democratic side, Kerry was pressing an increasingly populist attack against Bush. One of his ads that aired frequently in key states last week called Bush an ally of “the powerful and the well connected” and “the Saudi royal family.” But the Democrat’s spots on the whole gave voters more of a comparison between Kerry and Bush.

Among anti-Bush groups, the League of Conservation Voters went on the air in Florida over the weekend with an ad calling Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney “big oil’s best friends.” It accused the Bush administration of supporting offshore oil drilling. Under Bush’s plan, however, new Gulf of Mexico wells would be at least 100 miles from Florida beaches.