Bill Ruiz, I’m sorry that I never got to know you – before I got sick of you.
You look like the kind of guy I’d like, but by the time Joe Biden gets done with you, I’ll never want to see your face again. And you’ve already become a symbol of all the mental loin-girding and emotional hatch-battening I’ll have to do in order to survive the 2023-2024 election cycle.
Starting on October 4, Ruiz, a Phoenix carpenter with a big smile, began starring in a 16-week Biden reelection ad campaign that’s just the tip of an $821 million political ad iceberg that’s bearing down on Arizona leading up to the general election on November 5, 2024.
Sadly, you can’t really avoid something that takes over your TV, your radio and your phone’s favorite websites, though – you just close your eyes, drive through it and hope for a better-than-Titanic result.
$821 million is what advertising analytics firm AdImpact projects will be spent in Arizona this go-round – second in the U.S. only to California’s projected $1.19 billion. But don’t feel slighted. As Valley pollster Mike Noble points out, the cost difference between California and Arizona media ads means we’ll be número uno for the sheer volume of political ads this cycle.
If you take the 4.2 million registered voters in Arizona, and overlay voter turnout (79.9 percent) from 2020’s presidential election, that $821 million comes out to $245 per voter. It’s all the evidence you need that Arizona has become a preeminent battleground state. Texas has four times as many people as us, but do candidates buy $800 million worth of ads there? Shoot, no! That’s GOP country!
It would only be too easy to blame Joe Biden for this ad nightmare, given that he beat Donald Trump in Arizona by a purplish 0.3 points in 2020. But the truth is, Arizona was a bona fide battleground state before 2020, and AdImpact projects less than 17 percent of Arizona ads will be spent on the presidential race in 2024.
In 2022, more than $235 million was spent on the Mark Kelly vs. Blake Masters U.S. Senate race. Imagine what could be spent on a potential Kyrsten Sinema/Ruben Gallego/Kari Lake cage match? Actually, I’d rather not – I’d like to keep my eyes closed.
When I laid out these figures for NBC News analyst Chuck Todd, he asked me if we should put all the political ads on one channel.
I’m sure the ad agencies and political action committees buying the ads wouldn’t like Chuck’s plan. Nobody would watch them. But… does anybody, anyway?
So, I think I might have a better solution: The candidates, campaigns and committees should send $245 gift cards to each registered voter and the cards can only be activated when a ballot is turned in.
I’m sure the politicians and their consultants will ask, “How will you know who best matches your views if we don’t run our ads?!”
Uh, reading? Asking? Thinking?
My plan means I can get back to picking candidates because I like them – and get back to liking people like Bill Ruiz.
