Peter Schorsch
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carlos Beruff has not “pulled the plug” on his TV advertising campaign, contrary to a report published on The Capitolist.
On Sunday morning, blogger Sarah Rumpf wrote Beruff “suddenly cut off all spending on broadcast and cable television ads this week.” Such a maneuver by Beruff would all but concede the Republican primary to incumbent Marco Rubio (yeah yeah, Beruff’s not going to beat Rubio no matter how much he spends on television advertisements).
Rumpf writes her information is based on “publicly reported data on statewide media buys” and that his “last ad placements aired last Tuesday, Aug. 2, and he has not bought any new ads since then.”
Not so, says Beruff’s campaign.
“That is not true at all,” Chris Hardline told FloridaPolitics not soon after Rumpf’s post popped.
Although a Rumpf vs. Beruffworld back-and-forth is not our fight, we attempted to get to the bottom of this situation.
According to an independent media buy tracker who works for a nationally recognized firm, Beruff is still on the air. According to our source, who asked to remain on background because they did not want to get involved in Republican party politics, Beruff’s campaign is, at the very least, still up on cable.
Here is his current buy, which began Saturday:
Total $153K – Cable Only
Miami, ~15 GRPs, $10K
Tampa, ~85 GRPs, $34K
West Palm Beach, ~155 GRPs, $27K
Orlando, ~75 GRPs, $35K
Jacksonville, ~60 GRPs, $12K
Fort Myers, ~120 GRPs, $19K
Mobile, ~100 GRPs, $11K
Dothan-Panama City, ~40 GRPs, $2K
Tallahassee, ~60 GRPs, $4K
All of this said, we have to agree with Rumpf that something is up. Having watched several hours worth of Olympics coverage across several networks, there has been no sign of Beruff, who was omnipresent on cable TV during the month of July.
However, it’s difficult to prove a double-negative, so at this point, we have to go with the data from the media buy tracker.
