Wednesday, October 15, 2008

The $2 Million Dollar Advantage

There are many numbers to parse through in the third quarter campaign finance reports filed Wednesday for political races in Missouri. But with just 19 days remaining until election day, there's really only one that matters.

How much you got to spend? In the business, it's called cash-on-hand. It's the money the candidate still has at his or her disposal at the end of the reporting period, which in this case was Sept. 30th.

In the race for Governor, it's another bad number for Republican Kenny Hulshof. It's why the campaign didn't even bother to send out a release about it.

It's not a bad number by itself. $1.2 Million. That's what Hulshof had to spend on Sept. 30th. But put it next to Jay Nixon's number, and you see why Hulshof is at a financial disadvantage.

Nixon's number is $3.2 Million. Again, that's the amount he had on Sept. 30th to throw around for get-out-the-vote efforts, staffing, mailers, and most importantly, television and radio ads.

It's a $2 million dollar difference heading into the final stretch. So when your watching television and see more Nixon ads than Hulshof ads, think . . . $2 million dollars. It's a whole lot more dough. And it gives Nixon more opportunities to get his message across to voters in the remaining weeks.

Nixon will eventually close out his campaign with positive television buys. But ironically, in many of the remaining ads you will see, Hulshof's face will appear just as often as Nixon's.

But because of that $2 million dollars, Nixon gets to decide how Hulshof appears.







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