CLEVELAND — If it seems like the number of ads in the Ohio race for the U.S. Senate is more than usual, you're not mistaken. The folks at AdImpact, which tracks political ad spending, put the Ohio Senate Race as the most expensive in history, with $441 million in past and future spending between the candidates and the PACs supporting them.
By comparison, they report $121 million more than the next closest state, Pennsylvania. Both involve Senate seats held by Democrats Republicans want to flip.
"Look, Republicans here in Washington are pretty confident that they're going to take control of the Senate, but the difference between having 50 seats to 51, 52, that could be huge in terms of passing their priorities come next Congress, and it could come all down to Ohio," said Scripps News Political Director Andrew Rafferty.
"Obviously, 49 Republicans right now. When you take West Virginia, and they feel confident, that's going to turn red with retiring Senator Joe Manchin. Montana's looking good for Republicans, but after that, the math isn't probably as favorable as they thought it was going into this year and the reason is because Democrats have some good candidates and a case in point is Sherrod Brown," he said.
Brown, Tester and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania all ousted Republican incumbents in winning their seats in 2006. They won re-election in 2012 and '18 but face a difficult challenge in '24.
We asked voters like Peggy Humbert of Fairview Park if the barrage of ads impacts them.
"Actually no," Humbert said. "It starts to get a little boring after a while and I know this is on TV but it repeats constantly."
Carol Wills of Cleveland agreed. "It's too many, too many and too much."
But this is a race where all voters kind of have to go on. There was never a debate scheduled where these two could go head-to-head despite both telling News 5 over the last two weeks that they were still willing.
"Look let's do it right now. Where's Sherrod let's get him on the phone. Let's do a debate right now," said GOP Senate Candidate Bernie Moreno. "Look Sherrod won't do a debate for a simple reason, he's been in Washington, D.C. for 30 years."
Brown, for his part, when asked if there was any chance for a debate, told News 5, "I've debated everytime I've run for the Senate and the House. I'm always willing to debate. Doesn't look like one is going to happen," said Brown. When asked what was the holdup, he said, "I don't know."
We asked Linda Fredrickson of Rocky River if the lack of a debate impacted her ability to decide the Senate race.
"Yes, very definitely," she said. "And the ads don't work. The ads really don't work and if they do work then perhaps you're not voting responsibly because there is not enough information in, you know, 18 seconds."
Still, Rafferty said don't expect the ads to slow down in the waning days of this election.
"Yes you get diminishing returns at some point but if you're a campaign in the final stretch here, less than two weeks before Election Day, you want to make sure that any ad, especially a negative ad that's out there that's going against you, you want to make sure you have an answer to that."
Dexter Fellows of Cleveland said to tune out the ads and follow his advice: "Do your homework."
