Texatics: TV ads galore

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

I don't watch much in the way of TV ads when I'm at home. My replayTV cuts those out of my life. I occasionally go searching political ads out on YouTube or catch them on websites, but I'm definitely a bit hard to reach with regular TV ads. But here in Texas, even with a TiVo, I can't avoid them. That's because pretty much every ad is for some political candidate or another.

Obama definitely has more of them, but Clinton definitely has a strong presence on the air. To the right you've got SEIU's 527 pro-Obama ad. To the left you've got one of Clinton's ads that she's running here in Texas. It seems to be a slightly modified version of an Ohio ad, with less union shoutouts and more Texas flags.  And Hillary's Latino song seems to be everywhere too, and, wow, that catches in your mind pretty quickly.

I suppose I really couldn't say if the presidential candidates advertised a whole lot more in Texas than in California, but I think what makes it so much more noticeable are all the other campaigns at the same time. You have the primary for the Senate campaign, where Rick Noriega is running against a perennial candidate and some random Republican-turned-Democrat. By the by, Noriega was at yKos last year, where I had a chance to meet him. He was quite an interesting, and impressive man. But far more visible are all the ads for the state House and judgeships. Man, there must be hundreds of ads for all the different state court judgeships.  It must be like Christmas in March for the ad sales folks.

And then there are the signs, oh, the signs. At well-trafficked corners you have dozens of massive signs competing for your attention. Like for Dawnna Dukes, the Democrat who votes for Republican Speakers of the House every single time, yet keeps getting reelected in a heavily Democratic district. The reason I bring up Dukes, well check out the ad over the flip where her real Democratic challenger name drops the presidential candidates.  

And I could go on for much, much longer with all these ads. As I said, they are pretty much every ad on TV here in Texas these days. I'm not sure what Bud Light is going to do to make Texans consider drinking that stuff with the ad time all taken up.

Clinton has a big town hall airing live on Fox Sports (interesting choice) and at HillaryClinton.com on Monday night. I'm going to try to get a ticket for that, should be an interesting event, even if only for the crowd interaction.