Don’t Take Presidential Dollars For Granted

Whenever I assess the vitality of TV broadcasting, I just presume that TV stations have a lock on the bulk of the presidential TV advertising every four years — the direct spending by the candidates as well as the indirect spending by super PACs and other groups that support them.

They certainly did this year. The presidential money piled up at those stations fortunate enough to be in one of the handful of swing states. By some estimates, it amounts to around $1 billion.

But my presumption that broadcasters have a lock on that spending in the years ahead may be flat wrong.

That presidential campaigns now hand over most of their money to TV stations stems mostly from the electoral college, which does the actual election of presidents. The system grants each state electoral votes based on the size of their congressional delegations (they get one vote for each senator and representative) and the states cast those votes based on who wins the popular vote in the states. In all but two states (Maine and Nebraska), it’s winner takes all.

The electoral college is embedded in the Constitution. The founding fathers liked the idea of democracy, but really didn’t trust the mob to directly elect the president. So, they contrived the college to insure that rich folks like themselves had the last word on who would get the big job.

The other factor working in favor of the local broadcasters is that in any given election year, the contest is competitive in only a handful of states (a generally recognized nine this year).

Savvy candidates and their backers learned long ago that if only a handful of states matter, it’s best to concentrate their TV advertising fire power in those states. And the best way to do that is to buy local spot. So, if you had a station in Ohio or Florida or one of the other seven swing states this year, you were golden. If not, you got bupkis from Obama and Romney.

Now, here’s the problem for all those golden broadcasters.

Many believe the electoral college is grossly unfair, giving too much weight to small states and way, way too much weight to the states that swing back and forth between the Democratic and Republican candidates. On three occasions in our history, a candidate lost the popular vote, but won the electoral vote and the presidency. That’s how Bush got in in 2000.

A lot of people would like to eliminate the college and go to the a national straight popular vote. But that would take an constitutional amendment, which is why I have presumed that the broadcasters’ quadrennial presidential windfall was safe. Most people don’t want to tamper with the fundamentals of the Constitution.

However, reading the papers just prior to the election, I learned that that there is a movement afoot that could lead to election of presidents by a national popular vote without the need for a constitutional amendment.

If successful, TV stations in today’s presidential swing states would be collateral damage as candidates and their backers shift TV ad dollars to national networks.

The movement is led by an organization called National Popular Vote, and takes as its starting point Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which gives the states broad discretion in how they allocate their electoral votes. Maine (four votes) and Nebraska (six votes), for instance, award their votes by congressional district, which means their votes could be split.

NPV has been going around for the past several years trying to convince state legislatures to award their electoral votes not on the basis of the popular votes in their own states as they now do, but rather on the basis on the national popular vote.

If NPV can persuade states representing 270 electoral votes — the bare majority of votes needed to get to the White House — to join in, the national popular vote would pick the president.

As of now, eight states and the District of Columbia, accounting for 132 electoral votes (49% of 270), have passed legislation adopting the plan. None of the legislation would take effect until the magic 270 mark is reached.

NPV is led and principally funded by two wealthy businessmen, John Koza and Tom Golisano. Koza made his money co-inventing the rub-off instant lottery tickets use by state lotteries. Golisano is the founder and chairman of Paychex, the nation’s second largest payroll and human resources company. Both believe strongly that fairness dictates a presidency based on a popular vote.

Koza is optimistic that NPV will eventually reach its 270-vote goal. “We would have liked to have gotten it done by 2012, but we get a state or two a year, ” he says. “It’s a slow process of talking one by one to state legislators and reminding them that they have the power to make this choice and then getting the legislation passed. As you know, it involves starting in committees and then going to the floor and then to the other house and then to the governor. So it’s a plodding process.”

Koza didn’t want to guess which states might be next to join the club. “We lobby in all 42 remaining states, but we will lobby particularly hard in states where it has passed one house already, which includes places like Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island.”

Koza concedes that the swing states may not be interested in participating and giving up all the attention they get every four years, but they don’t account for anywhere near a majority of electoral votes. For all the fuss made in this year’s nine swing states, they accounted for just 104 votes, fewer than what NPV has in its bag.

The movement appears to have some momentum and popular support. The (Newark) Star-Ledger on Monday joined a long list of major newspapers that have endorsed it, noting that New Jersey is among the states that have passed the bill. “Let’s pray that by 2016, the number crosses the 270 threshold. The person who gets the most votes should win. It’s that simple.”

 A quick Google search reveals that the NPV plan also has its critics. They have raised political, practical and constitutional questions that will likely give many state legislators pause.

Sorry for the long civics lesson, but I thought you should know. Going to a popular vote on the presidential elections would stand presidential political advertising on its head.

Local broadcasters wouldn’t lose all the presidential money. Local news would still be a good place to reach potential voters, and clever political strategists may want to use local spot to run different ads in different markets or regions — you know, geo-target. Of course, local spot would retain its attractiveness for the presidential primaries.

But stations would suddenly have to compete against the broadcast and cable networks for the big presidential dollars in the general election just as they do for all other kinds of national business. That’s no fun, especially given the networks’ CPM advantage.

Any local broadcaster that is penciling in big gobs of presidential money in 2016 would be wise to keep an eye on NPV. Don’t be like me. Don’t presume anything.

Harry A. Jessell is editor of TVNewsCheck. He can be contacted at 973-701-1067 or [email protected]. You can read earlier columns here.