Hillary Clinton’s campaign reversed course Thursday on the more than $60,000 ad buy it placed to run on the Weather Channel in Florida during Hurricane Matthew, and announced it’d hold off until after the storm.
“Earlier this week we made changes to our TV ad reservations across hundreds of stations in battleground states including Florida,” campaign spokesman Jesse Ferguson said in a statement. “Less than one percent of those changes included the Weather Channel.”
“We have requested that stations in Florida delay any of those ads on the Weather Channel until after the storm passes,” the statement added.
The ad buy, totaling $63,000, was slated to run from Thursday through Tuesday.
Hurricane Matthew, which has already caused more than 100 deaths in Haiti, is being taken very seriously by authorities in Florida who ordered evacuations earlier this week in preparation for the storm.
“This is serious,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott said this week. “Don’t take a chance. A small movement could mean a lot. That’s why we have to prepare for a direct hit. So again, if you need to evacuate and you haven’t, evacuate.”
“This storm will kill you. Time is running out. We don’t have that much time left,” he said.
Florida isn’t the only state bracing for the hurricane: North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia are also preparing for the worst.
“That’s a risky proposition,” Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., said of the Clinton ad buy Friday morning.
“I don’t know what they’re going to say. We don’t know, but clearly if they’re out being too political at a time when the country has its prayers with the people who are being affected, I think it could backfire,” he said in an interview on Fox News.
The Clinton about-face comes after the ad buy was criticized online as exploitive of a very real crisis facing people in the southeast.
