A final push in most expensive campaign

Obama presses edge over McCain in funding

An unprecedented $64 million worth of television ads in just the final week of the race will put an exclamation point on the most expensive presidential campaign in history.

Republican John McCain, bolstered by about $18 million in late spending by the Republican National Committee, will hold his own against Democrat Barack Obama on the airwaves in the closing days. But over the course of the long campaign, the Obama operation will have spent more than $100 million more than McCain and the RNC on TV ads, according to data compiled for the Obama campaign and reviewed by the Globe.

Obama has been pressing his lopsided fund-raising advantage to challenge McCain in states long considered safe for Republican presidential candidates.

Data compiled by Obama's campaign show that by Election Day, Obama will have outspent McCain and the RNC, $278 million to $176 million on broadcast and cable TV, including $3 million for last night's 30-minute infomercial on seven national television networks.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said: "Not since Richard Nixon has a candidate tried to buy his way into the Oval Office . . . until Barack Obama."

Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro answered: "Barack Obama's campaign has been funded by more than 3.1 million hard-working Americans giving small donations."

Obama, the first major party candidate to forgo public funding since the post-Watergate reform law went into effect in 1976, has smashed fund-raising records, taking in more than $600 million during the campaign, including the primary campaign, almost all from individual donors. McCain has raised $358 million, including $84.1 million in public funds for the last two months of the general election. McCain counted on national party money to help offset the Obama financial onslaught.

The RNC has helped McCain narrow the gap with Obama, but the problem for the Republicans is that they are almost exclusively playing defense as the clock ticks to Nov. 4, trying to hold off Obama in states carried by President Bush in 2004.

Among states that Democrat John F. Kerry won four years ago, McCain and the RNC are making a concerted effort in only one, Pennsylvania; in 17 other states, Republicans are either trying to defend states won by Bush or making token efforts in Democratic-leaning states. And even in Pennsylvania, Obama will outspend them by about $900,000 for the week through Election Day in the Keystone State, according to the Obama campaign data.

In the final week, McCain and the RNC will outspend Obama's campaign in the battlegrounds of Ohio, Florida, and Missouri, the report shows. The RNC made its heaviest last-minute purchases of airtime in Florida ($4.2 million) and Ohio ($3.4 million), two Bush states in which Obama is even or slightly ahead in the polls.

However, in the Sunshine State, considered a lock for McCain only two months ago, Obama had been airing uncontested ads for months and by Election Day will have outspent the Republican and the RNC, $36 million to $13 million. In the Buckeye State, which tipped the Electoral College to Bush in 2004, Obama will have outspent McCain and the RNC by a small amount, about $1 million out of a combined $62 million by both sides.

Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, and Montana are other traditionally safe Republican states where Obama's team spent large sums on TV ads for months before McCain and the RNC responded, after polling data showed the Democrat pulling ahead or nearly even in polls. This week, the RNC jumped in to defend Montana, buying about $290,000 worth of ads in a state Bush carried by 20 percentage points four years ago. The Obama campaign has spent more than $2.2 million in Montana.

The RNC also boosted its advertising in support of McCain in West Virginia, a state Bush won by 13 points in 2004 and where both sides have been buying airtime in markets that reach into the neighboring battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia.

In the first two weeks of October, the RNC also meted out $11 million to Republican state committee efforts in 21 states to be used to support the GOP ticket and get-out-the-vote efforts, according to its filing with the Federal Election Commission. The Republican Party of Florida was the chief beneficiary ($3.2 million), followed by Pennsylvania ($1.5 million) and Ohio ($1.3 million).

Four weeks ago, the McCain campaign abandoned Michigan, another big state won by Kerry, and in the final week has all but written off New Hampshire and Wisconsin, two other states Kerry captured and where recent polls show Obama with commanding leads and heavily outspending McCain on the airwaves.

The only states where the McCain campaign and the GOP have maintained a clear-cut TV spending edge over Obama are Iowa, where Bush eked out a win in 2004, and Minnesota, where Kerry prevailed. Obama leads McCain in both states by double digits in most recent public polls.

"The McCain campaign has done an admirable job 'gaming the system' by getting as much as they could out of McCain-Feingold," said Evan Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, a group which monitors political advertising trends, referring to the 2002 campaign finance reform act coauthored by McCain.

That law limits the ways parties can directly help their presidential nominees. In recent years, the parties have found innovative ways to augment the candidate's own advertising - either by splitting the cost of ads that mention both the candidate and the party or buying ads without coordinating with the candidate's organization.

Tracey said that with such heavy purchases of airtime, campaigns reach a point of diminishing returns, buying spots at all hours on obscure stations. McCain's campaign, he said, has managed to remain competitive in many markets with more valuable spots on prized time slots, Tracey said.

As one McCain campaign operative in Florida mused recently: "We knew Obama had more money than he could spend when we began seeing spots on the CMT [Country Music Television] cable channel at midnight."