Government spends $2.5M for ad during Super Bowl to boost census

February 6, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Faced with record levels of red ink into the foreseeable future, Washington is spending $2.5 million to create buzz for the census — by advertising during the Super Bowl.

The Census Bureau is hoping to exploit the strong ratings from this annual attraction, aiming to get more participation from people who now seem disinclined to mail back a government questionnaire or even answer the door.

Census officials call it a good investment, saying the front-end costs of purchasing the ads can be recouped quickly if they succeed in encouraging people to mail back their census forms. A recent poll found nearly 1 in 5 residents said they may not fill them out, mostly because they were unfamiliar with the census or weren’t interested.

The government relies on the census not only to learn about Americans and their lives but also to parcel out federal dollars and, as required by the Constitution, to determine the number of U.S. House seats representing each state. The census officially began last month in rural Alaska, and most of the U.S. will receive forms by mail the week of March 15.

Not everyone is happy about spending taxpayer money to tout the census during the Super Bowl.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., tweeted this week that the government “shouldn’t be wasting 2.5 million taxpayer dollars to compete with ads for Doritos!” Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., called on the Census Bureau to justify every dollar of its $133 million ad campaign, citing the tight economic times.

There’s no such lack of interest on the part of the mayors, county commissioners, governors, U.S. House members and state legislators — a host of public figures ranging from city hall to the U.S. Capitol.

Those people hang on every census because the head count determines the size and shape of legislative districts and, equally critical, just how much money the various localities get from some $400 billion in federal aid.