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Who is Tom Ganley? He’s spending millions to tell you
Those commercials for the casino gambling initiative, Issue 3, that seemed to be on TV every time you turned it on are gone for good.
They stopped Nov. 4, the day after voters approved the proposal.
Just when you thought the airwaves were free of political commercials for a while, here comes Tom Ganley.
Running a largely self-funded campaign for U.S. senator in the Republican primary, Ganley purchased airtime statewide, including the Youngstown market, touting his candidacy. His 60-second commercial started airing Wednesday.
Ganley is the first Senate candidate to have commercials on TV. The primary is next May with the general election a year away.
The commercial introduces the Cleveland-area car dealer to the state touting his business background and basic platform issues such as creating jobs, cutting taxes for small businesses and stopping “reckless spending.”
The Ganley campaign played those same coy games you get from most politicians when you ask about spending money.
The commercials were “a big buy,” said Jeff Longstreth, Ganley’s campaign spokesman, when asked how much was spent.
As for how long it will air, “This is the first ad of many,” he said.
With about six months before the primary, is Ganley, who plans to spend about $7 million of his own money on this campaign, on television too early?
No, says William Binning, Youngstown State University police science department chairman, and John Green, director of the University of Akron’s Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.
“He’s not known in Ohio, except the Cleveland area,” Binning said. “If he wants to have a presence, he has to make himself known. He’s got to get credibility. It’s not too early.”
Green added: “I don’t think it’s ever to early to go on TV for a person not known well. He needs to increase his name recognition outside of Northeast Ohio.”
The commercials won’t necessary work because, as Green points out, “A lot of people won’t be paying attention.”
Ganley will face ex-U.S. Rep. Rob Portman, a former U.S. trade representative and director of the Office of Management and Budget, in the Republican primary.
The two leading Democrats for the Senate seat — looking to replace the retiring George V. Voinovich, a Republican — are Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.
Portman has the endorsement of the Ohio Republican Party, practically ever prominent Republican in the state and plenty of national Republican leaders.
But as Portman told me in May, “I think endorsements are overrated, even the ones I’ve made.”
He has a point.
A Quinnipiac University Poll, released Thursday, shows Portman leading Ganley among registered Republicans 26 percent to 7 percent with 64 percent undecided, 2 percent supporting someone else and 1 percent stating they aren’t voting. Only one-third of Republicans polled favor either candidate leaving that race completely wide open.
In comparison, Fisher leads Brunner 24 percent to 22 percent. That also leaves a lot of undecideds, but not as many as among Republican voters.
Binning, a former Mahoning County Republican chairman, said the Portman-Ganley match-up “could be a real race. Portman is known by party insiders, but he’s not known outside of” the Cincinnati area, which he represented for about 12 years in the U.S. House.
If Ganley is “able to capitalize on his name in Northeast Ohio, it could be a competitive primary,” Green said. “It’s certainly not impossible that Ganley can win the Republican primary and it’s possible it will be a competitive primary.”
Perhaps the most interesting data from the Quinnipiac Poll is the head-to-head match-ups between Democrats and Republicans for the seat.
Portman beats Brunner 38 percent to 34 percent and tops Fisher 39 percent to 36 percent. With a 4.9-percent margin of error, both races are statistical dead-heats. Also, there are many undecideds.
Compare that to Ganley’s results.
In the poll, Fisher beats Ganley 38 percent to 34 percent and Brunner is ahead of Ganley 35 percent to 32 percent. Like Portman, Ganley — who’s never run for public office before — is in a statistical dead-heat in races against the Democrats with plenty of undecideds.
The results also shows that 70 percent of those polled haven’t heard enough about Portman to have an opinion of him while that percentage is 82 for Ganley.
There’s about six months before the Republican primary for Senate. That’s plenty of time for Ganley to spend plenty of money. That could force Portman, who had $5.1 million in his campaign fund as of Sept. 30, to spend a lot of cash in the primary, something that could weaken him for the November 2010 general election campaign.