The Republican and Democratic campaign committees backed Facebook's request for a waiver from a requirement that the site's campaign ads contain a disclaimer stating who paid for them.
In a letter to the Federal Election Commission, sent in April, Facebook argued that displaying the disclaimers would be impractical due to the small size of ads on the site.
The Republican National Committee, Democratic National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee all wrote the FEC in support of the firm's request.
House Majority PAC on Tuesday released the TV ad it's running against Republican Jane Corwin in New York's 26th district.
The buy is in the "low six figure[s]," according to the Democratic-aligned group.
The ad accuses Corwin of supporting a budget plan that would "essentially end Medicare," a charge that has flown back and forth between the Republican, Democrat Kathy Hochul and Independent Jack Davis during the special-election race.
The National Republican Congressional Committee has matched its Democratic counterpart in its initial ad buy in western New York's special election.
A GOP operative told The Ballot Box the NRCC's Independent Expenditure arm has reserved just more than $260,000 worth of airtime in Buffalo and Rochester. The committee's ad will start airing Monday, primarily on broadcast television, but it will also be seen on Fox cable.
The operative noted this was an "initial" buy and could be augmented depending on the situation.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee placed a $250,000 media buy in the 26th district earlier this week, according to a party operative.
A GOP strategist told The Ballot Box the DCCC's buy, which is also primarily on broadcast television, is split between Buffalo and Rochester. The ad will start airing Friday and run through Election Day on May 24.
In a bid to stop Independent candidate Jack Davis from siphoning off votes, New York Republican Jane Corwin labeled him an ally of national Democrats in a new TV ad.
Davis, who is running on the Tea Party line in the 26th district special election, ran for Congress previously as a Democrat. In its 30-second spot, Corwin's camp says he was a "handpicked candidate" by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) to run.
With a recent poll showing Davis taking 23 percent of the vote, Republicans are worried he could be a spoiler in the May 24 vote.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee is out with a new Web ad linking Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to President Obama one day after the centrist Democrat voted against repealing the healthcare reform law.
Manchin, who won his seat in a special election last year and is facing a tough 2012 reelection battle, has been critical of some of the reform law's key provisions in the past, but he voted Wednesday night to keep the law intact.
“I don’t think that throwing out the good parts of this bill, like helping seniors afford prescription drugs or ending discrimination against people with preexisting conditions, makes good common sense,” Manchin said in a statement after the vote. “That’s why I have repeatedly said that we should make every effort to work together on repairing this bill before we start talking about repealing it.”
The NRSC ad, released Thursday morning, compares Manchin and Obama to other duos, like Sonny and Cher, Siegfried and Roy, and bacon and eggs. They are “doing everything together,” the ad claims.
Manchin has repeatedly said in the past that he prefers fixing the reform law as opposed to throwing it out entirely. In particular, Manchin is looking for fixes to the law’s requirement for individuals to purchase insurance, as well as expanded Medicaid requirements for states.
In the wake of a failed vote in the Senate on Saturday that would have extended the Bush-era tax cuts for just middle-income families, a liberal group is targeting two centrist Republicans with online ads hitting their 'no' votes.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is hitting Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), with targeted online ads that double as a fundraising appeal for the liberal group.
"Democrats wanted to stop borrowing billions to fund tax cuts for the wealthy," one ad reads. "Olympia Snowe voted no."
Both Snowe and Brown are up for reelection in 2012 and are likely Tea Party targets, as well.
The Saturday Senate vote fell short of the 60 votes it needed for passage. Members voted 53-36 for the amendment from Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) that would have extended the cuts for families with incomes of up to $250,000.
The group's co-founder Adam Green said the PCCC is spending between $15,000 and $20,000 on the ad campaign to reach between one and a half and two million people.
"The strategy for Democratic victory is clear: Schedule vote after vote on ending tax cuts for the rich, create pressure back home for Republicans, and make clear that continued obstruction won't result in a deal--it will result in continued accountability," Green said.
The group, which has been increasingly critical of President Obama's posture in the tax cut debate, is also up with online ads targeting Speaker-designate John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
The group recently launched a TV ad targeting the president's tax cut stance and after raising some $50,000 through the effort, expanded the TV buy into Iowa.
Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, the man behind the airing of campaign ads in the Washington, D.C., area earlier this year that featured graphic images of aborted fetuses, wants to take the ads national in 2012.
Terry told TheWashington Post that he's planning to recruit Congressional candidates in or around 25 of the nation's largest media markets in 2012 in an attempt to get the greatest amount of exposure for the spots.
He's also weighing his own bid for president two years from now. Terry said that would pave the way for him to run an ad during the Super Bowl, which he called "the coup de grace."
This past cycle, Terry recruited Missy Reilly Smith to run against Washington, D.C., Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D). Smith's campaign then ran the ads, the content of which cannot be altered, according to federal law.
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The ads "did exactly what they were supposed to do," Terry said. "Missy's ad got more pro-life debate, more pro-life press...in two and a half weeks than all other pro-life news that I know of in the whole country."
Smith, running as a Republican, got only 6 percent of the vote against incumbent Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton.
The ad strategy comes out of a deliberate attempt by Terry to emulate "the social revolutions of the past" -- he mentioned the American Revolution and the civil rights movement in an interview at his Northern Virginia home Friday.
"I have no question that child-killing will not be ended until America has a crisis of conscience brought about by seeing the babies," he said. "If I run for the presidency, it will be to bring America face to face with dead babies."
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