PRAIRIE VILLAGE, KS — Politics has long been a key beat for Iowa media. But today, political campaigns in the Hawkeye State are about much more than caucuses, straw polls, and steak fries. As the site of one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country, the state has been swamped with TV ads, many from super PACs or other outside groups that can spend unlimited amounts of cash.
So eight papers that serve the state have teamed up to track those ads, using a new tool and support from a watchdog group to follow the money, identify the key players and describe the balance of political power. The project might not deliver any race-changing scoops, but it still suggests that collaboration and a little legwork can help even small and mid-sized publications get a handle on the ad-spending free-for-all and give readers a clearer sense of what’s going on.
The partnership traces back to 2012, when the Des Moines Register and other Iowa papers teamed up to track political advertisements being run by presidential campaigns and allied groups in every corner of the state. They used a new tool that became available that year: the Federal Communications Commission’s broadcast TV-station database, where contracts for political ad buys on broadcast stations across the country are uploaded. This summer, the database expanded from just the 50 biggest markets to every broadcast station nationwide.
The media partnership has now been revived (with a few membership changes) to track Iowa’s intensely competitive Senate race between Democrat Bruce Braley and Republican Joni Ernst, which will help determine partisan control of the chamber. On Sept. 21, the Register published the first installment in what will be a three-part series on ad spending in the race, based on data compiled by the paper and its seven partner newspapers across the state. Some of the partners produced their own articles using the same data; others ran the Register’s piece, sometimes with additional localized reporting.
These reports revealed that from June to mid-September, more than 30,000 Senate ads were aired on the small state’s broadcast affiliates, at a cost of $13.8 million. But the most important revelation was the extent of outside spending—ad buys that didn’t come from campaigns, but from supporting groups.
In June, we argued that Iowa reporters should focus more attention on the outside groups that had already spent more than $1 million in support of Joni Ernst, boosting her surprise primary win. The Register’s piece last week, along with those of the Quad-City Times, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and Cedar Rapids Gazette, showed that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Outside groups have accounted for 79 percent of all pro-Ernst ad spending.
And yet, she’s not even the biggest beneficiary. Eighty-four percent of all pro-Braley spending had come from outside groups at the time the papers’ analysis was conducted. Of the more than $13 million in total ad spending, the two campaigns themselves had spent only about $1.2 million each.
As one local ad sales manager dryly told The Gazette’s Erin Jordan, “There is much more of the PAC money this year than there has been before.”
Among the various reporters on the project, Ed Tibbetts of the Times and Christinia Crippes of the Courier deserve particular credit for naming major outside players by name. On Braley’s side, the list includes billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate Action, and Senate Majority PAC, which is closely tied to Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid. On Ernst’s, it includes Concerned Veterans for America, Freedom Partners Action Fund, and Americans for Prosperity—all tied to the billionaire Koch brothers.
Following the ad money to the source is “especially important now that you have these committees with Orwellian names like Americans for a Better America,” said Kathy Kiely, managing editor at the Sunlight Foundation, who advised Iowa reporters on the project. “These groups don’t spend money without having an agenda.”
Making the case for open data—by using it
Working with the ad-buy files isn’t always a seamless experience, and Sunlight is trying to change that. Some of the Iowa reporters conducted their research using the foundation’s Political Ad Sleuth tool, which aims to make the FCC records—uploaded as clunky PDFs—more accessible.
Political Ad Sleuth remains a work in progress, and Sunlight is relying on volunteers to help enter the massive amounts of information, Kiely said. Another challenge is that some filings remain incomplete. Last spring, the Sunlight Foundation and the Campaign Legal Center filed complaints against 11 stations where buyers had neglected to fill in details such as the names of their CEOs or board members, or any issues or candidates mentioned in the ad. Since then, “we have seen revised forms,” Kiely said. (CJR’s Susannah Nesmith previously wrote about Political Ad Sleuth, and the complaints, in May.)
As Iowa reporters found, however, some records remain noncompliant. The Ottumwa Courier noted in its report that 26 of 27 purchase orders from outside groups in its local market omitted the name of the candidate mentioned in the ads, though most of those ad buys came from a known pro-Ernst group.
But perhaps the biggest limitation of the FCC database is that while it now includes all broadcast stations, it excludes other major segments of the ad market: cable, satellite TV, and radio stations. The Iowa group’s reporting, thorough as it was, did not include those media.
Jeffrey Kummer, deputy political editor at the Register, said those parts of the political ad game need more attention, too.
“A lot of those ads on the cable channels cost much less than the network ads do,” he said. “It’s not necessarily the dollar spending, but the number of ads.”
To fill that knowledge gap, Sunlight is urging the FCC to expand the database. Along with the Campaign Legal Center and Common Cause, the foundation has petitioned to extend the political-ad filing requirements to cable, satellite, and radio; the FCC sought public comments on the petition last month.
Kiely would not speculate on what the commission will ultimately decide, but the fact that reporters are starting to use the database more is a good sign, she said. She hopes journalists across the country will follow the lead of the Register and its partners in Iowa, who will publish the remaining two installments of their ad-tracking series in mid- to late October and after the election in November.
“Nothing makes the case better for open data than people using it,” Kiely said, “especially journalists.”
The Iowa effort could also be replicated in other states—like my own home state of Kansas, for instance, where unusually competitive races for governor and Senate have drawn unprecedented involvement from outside players.
The Register’s Kummer says journalists across the country have much to gain through collaboration.
“I think there’s a great benefit not only for larger papers but the smaller papers as well,” he said. “It’s really kind of a cool opportunity to pool our resources, share our work and do something that benefits all of us and our readers.”
Deron Lee is CJR’s correspondent for Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. A writer and copy editor who has spent nine years with the National Journal Group, he has also contributed to The Hotline and the Lawrence Journal-World. He lives in the Kansas City area. Follow him on Twitter at @deron_lee.