By Adam Pagnucco.
The Committee for Better Government, which is working to pass a ballot question reducing term limits for the county executive from three to two, has filed a new campaign finance report listing tens of thousands of dollars in contributions over the last two weeks.
Some of that money has financed TV expenditures.
First, let’s look at the contributions themselves. From October 7 through October 20, the committee received $66,460. The biggest single contribution of $50,000 came from Progressives for Progress PAC, a group chaired by Washington Property Company President Charlie Nulsen. Five thousand dollars each came from concrete contractor Miller and Long, real estate company DSC Partners and an entity affiliated with the Bernstein Companies, another real estate firm.
The committee then spent $76,906 over the period. More than $20,000 went to online advertising and another $7,500 paid a management fee charged by Fells Group, a campaign firm. But the largest single expenditure was $39,625 for TV as shown in the screenshot below.
On Friday, I published the term limits group’s video ad. This could be the ad intended for TV.
This is not a lot of money for TV and probably will be sufficient only for cable ads. (There could always be more spent after this report.) As of this writing, I have not seen cable political ads under the Committee for Better Government’s name in the Federal Communications Commission’s database. I will check again soon.
And what is the anti-term limits ballot issue committee, Against Question A: Make Your Vote Count, doing? As of two weeks ago, that committee was nearly broke. We shall find out if that changes by Friday, when its next campaign finance report is due.