Long Island's state Senate races are advertising hotbeds
by Jeremy Harrell, 10/27/06
From an advertising point of view, the 2006 election on Long Island figured to be a snoozer.
The governor's race has effectively been over for months, as has the U.S. Senate race. None of Long Island's U.S. representatives face a serious challenge this year, and the Island's nine state senators - all Republicans - looked, as recently as four months ago, as though they would breeze back into office.
For all these reasons, John Mangano, president of New Media Printing in Bethpage, figured this would be an off year, with fewer direct mail opportunities and fewer yard signs to make.
"But it's going pretty well," he said this week. "We're doing the same, if not more, than two years ago. More local candidates are putting out products. I don't think I see anyone rolling over dead."
Paradoxically, the same political forces that have turned the governor and U.S. Senate races into sleepwalks have made two of the Island's state Senate races advertising hotbeds. Since Democrats Eliot Spitzer and Hillary Clinton have sewn up their races, Republicans have redoubled their efforts on local races, said Michael Dawidziak, a Bohemia-based political consultant who mainly works with the GOP.
"People, generally, come out on Election Day to vote for the top of the ticket," Dawidziak said, and with no coattails to ride, the two Island state senators considered most vulnerable - John Flanagan, whose district stretches along western Suffolk's North Shore, and Caesar Trunzo in Islip - have been forced to blitz the region with advertising to beat back a larger Democratic wave.
"Republican incumbents are intensifying their efforts on every level," said Richard Guardino, dean of Hofstra University's School for Suburban Studies, who has observed little abatement in campaign spending this fall. "At a minimum, the Republican incumbents will want to drive out their base support and make sure they get to the polls."
The problem is compounded for the GOP, given the national mood, Dawidziak said. "The president's approval ratings are in the tank, and the congressional leadership looks like The Three Stooges," he added.
Guardino said 2006 is shaping up to be like 1974, when a Watergate-fueled backlash against Republicans filtered down to local elections, or 1984, when Ronald Reagan's enormous popularity lifted even the most obscure Republican.
"The Senate Republicans are spending everything they can," Dawidziak said. "That's probably smart, because it's going to be a Democratic tsunami."
By the time Nov. 7 arrives, Flanagan and Trunzo will likely have spent $1 million each on advertising, said Anthony Manetta, president of Roosevelt Strategy Group, a consultancy working on several Long Island and statewide races, including the campaign of Jeanine Pirro, the GOP attorney general nominee.
Republican unease is filtering down to other local races, too. Manetta said his client, Suffolk County Clerk Judy Pascale, has started running TV and radio ads for her re-election bid.
"I don't think that ad spending is necessarily down," he said.
Over an eight-day span in late September, for instance, Flanagan's campaign spent nearly $80,000 on television ads, according to the state Board of Elections. During the same period, Trunzo spent $40,000 on television spots.
Two years ago, state Sen. Carl Marcellino, R-Syosset, turned heads by spending more than $550,000 on his own campaign, with another $600,000 coming from state party leaders. Trunzo and Flanagan are poised to top that record amount, said political commentator Jerry Kremer, a former Democratic assemblyman.
Even if Flanagan and Trunzo aren't thought to be in dire danger of losing their seats, the state's GOP doesn't want to wake up Nov. 8 to find out it lost its precious Senate majority because it didn't spend every dime it could.
"Control of the state Senate is so important that they must empty out the checkbook to keep their majority," Kremer said. "They're going to break all spending records, and they're going to survive."
The focus on local races means that Cablevision Systems Corp. is positioned to reap most of the rewards, especially because standard broadcast advertising in the New York metropolitan market is prohibitively expensive, except for the most-endowed campaigns. A company spokesman declined to comment for this story, but a national trade group predicted $200 million in cable advertising in 2006, a significant increase from two years ago.
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