Politico’s Jonathan Martin writes on Florida ads, following a report from Marc Ambinder that Romney has outspent McCain 8 to 1 on television” “According to Neilsen, [Romney has] run 4,475 ads compared to John McCain’s 470 through 1/22. McCain did not run a single ad until January; Romney ran more ads in September than McCain has run to date.” Mark Salter, a senior McCain adviser, said yesterday that his candidate had made a major push over the course of the last week, with 2000 points in all major media markets since last Monday. (In Miami, the ad buy was 1700 points). That means that the average television viewer would have seen the ad twenty times over the past week. The McCain campaign also bought $250,000 worth of radio ads across the state, some of that time going to a harsh critique of Romney. (See Martin here.) If Romney wins here, he will doubtless spend vast sums of his personal fortune buying ads that will allow him to take advantage of the momentum a victory will give him. The big question, if he loses and McCain adds to his South Carolina momentum (and, presumably, his bank account), is how much Romney will spend leading up to Super Tuesday. As one Romney sympathizer told me: “Mitt is a businessman. He won’t throw money away.”
