The race to replace Sen. Mitt Romney has already attracted significant levels of fundraising and personal and PAC investments, with candidates shelling out millions of their own money, while millions more pour in from national political action committees like the Club for Growth.
While the Senate election might quickly become one of most expensive in recent memory, the attempt to target delegates before the convention is “beyond normal,” veteran Utah political consultant Chuck Warren said.
But negative attack ads coming from super PACs seem to have lost some of their impact in a time when highly-informed delegates are saturated with campaign messaging directly from the candidates on social media, Warren said.
“I just don’t think it has the same power it did 10-20 years ago,” he said.
Be that as it may, super PACs continue to believe that negative campaign ads work, said Jay Goodliffe, a research fellow at Brigham Young University’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.
“Super PACs are much more willing to run the negative ads to attack an opponent,” Goodliffe said. “Candidates like to define themselves in positive ads and how they stand on issues. And they are happy for the outside group to take on the negative role to attack the candidates.”
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