The Cuomo-supporting Super PAC Fix the City spent a fortune on ads like this one. But they seemed to use a chainsaw instead of a scalpel in their media buying strategy.
Candidates overspending on news, underinvesting in alts
Despite his spin, I doubt Andrew Cuomo would ever leave Eric Adams, New York incumbent Mayor, to run as the lone independent against Democrat Zorhan Mamdani and Republican Curtis Sliwa. There’s too much TV money at stake.
With Mayor Adams having sat out the primary and earning accordant TV coverage, he and the others will support their campaigns with TV ads after Labor Day. Fix the City, the PAC established to support the former governor, failed Cuomo during his primary. They should start fixing themselves: their barrage of Tri-State ads only reminded people that they didn’t like Cuomo. His campaigns, whether for governor or during the mayoral primary mean that his TV placement for his run in the general election will be more of the same.
Not much is made, however, of Ocasio-Cortez’ Super PAC, which supported Anyone but Cuomo. Those ads began running late in the primary after she endorsed Mamdani. In 2021, Ocasio-Cortez supported the winning Comptroller candidate, Brad Lander, who gave up his job to run for Mayor in 2025. Despite her attack ads, Lander, former Comptroller Scott Stringer, City Council Speaker Adrianne Adams and others—save for Mamdani—combined for but a small fraction of Cuomo’s ranked vote.
All of Cuomo’s competitors were funded through New York’s Campaign Finance Board and yet benefitted from Ocasio-Cortez’ SuperPAC, a second revenue stream seemingly beyond the spirit of public financing. Ocasio-Cortez’s SuperPAC gave Cuomo’s competitors a boost after they committed to spending only taxpayer funds eligible to be matched by an amount determined by the Campaign Finance Board.
Now, weeks after the city’s Democratic primary, despite the millions of dollars the broadcast stations booked, candidates, buying ads in the same shows, didn’t buy equal recall. In 2024, Congressional candidates, whether during primary or general elections, like Ocasio-Cortez’s primary against a no-name opponent, spent millions of dollars throughout the region running in the same exact programs. Yet her district only covers a few zip codes. Using her willful waste as the standard, do party pollsters measure the losers’ celebrity after their TV schedules have run? After all, they often spend more than the winners.
Candidates are shifting, but seem obliged to buying Jeopardy!, Family Feud and The View, rather than TV’s viewers for their campaigns. They buy specific positions in chosen shows along with local news disproportionate to how voting viewers use television on average. N.Y.’s Mayoral candidates have shifted funds to expanded TV advertising opportunities on cable, YouTube and Roku but only selectively. TV’s campaign broadcast ad spending vs TV’s average audience chart by platform is imbalanced. Campaigns buy viewing voters when they’re watching shows with higher indices of viewing voters. They disregard their target when the target is watching shows they don’t buy.
Ever-increasing minority candidates are participating in all cities’ municipal elections that match their donated funds at rates as high as 8-1. Both ranked choice and early voting increases participation in all jurisdictions. Young, educated “neighbors,” N.Y. City’s Campaign Finance Board’s word, can readily raise as much as they can and have it matched with 8x interest. But they’ll all need consultants.
All of the Anybody but Cuomo candidates’ commercials ran in the same shows as Cuomo, sometimes in his immediate proximity. I saw Zelnor Myrie–not yet 40–a third term State Senator, run broadcast ads despite the fact that Queens, his home county, has a conspicuous concentration of home satellite dishes.
I was right that the Speaker, Ms. Adams, would only have enough TV money for a week, and, sponsor the same shows. I saw Zorhan’s ad weeks before hers in a Mets broadcast of the Subway Series during a seventh inning stretch. Whether the positioning was random or strategic, the game was on the Yankees cable network, too, as well as 19,998 other channels of digital broadcast, cable, satellite and streaming programming and internet origination on top of four million podcasts. Statistically speaking, relative to those who were using TV at that time, very few New York Prime Democratic Voters were watching the Mets and Yankees play.
Despite their different politics compared to Cuomo’s, strategists had Zohran and Zelnor buying the same shows, too! I told Mark Lodato, Dean of Syracuse University’s Newhouse Communications School–to his horror–that two young minority legislators were so far left that they ran their ads with New Jersey’s Democratic gubernatorial primary candidates.
Years ago, I broached Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf about TV’s audience shifting from broadcast to cable; that those who had been captive to local broadcast news were watching more cable programming than cable news. He called stringing ads around cable’s dial “a recipe for disaster.” The disaster hit Lander this year: his ad on Channel 11 during the Mets ran after Blue Chew. An ad for Jersey City Mayor, Steve Fullop, for N.J. governor would have been better.
Fullop ran two :30 second ads on WABC7 Noon News one day. But, later that night, none on New York’s WNBA Liberty. How is live primetime local sports not better placement than local news; which is available 4 times a day from five different stations. Of the many N.Y./N.J. candidates who were running TV ads at that time, only Scott Stringer’s campaign thought to buy time in the game.
Candidate pricing is guided by the lowest unit rate in the show. But they buy the highest-priced shows. SuperPAC money can bid prices up to be usury. Despite today’s thousands of options, candidates still chase the same commercial positions as low rated as the newsbreak between halves of The Price I$ Right and the 7:30am position on GMA. Given today’s number of channels, they’re playing the same numbers on roulette wheels every time with exponentially more slots.
The Closer, Kyra Sedgewick, and I are historically related. In 1928, her great-grand uncle, Atlantic Editor Ellery Sedgewick, supported Al Smith, the first Catholic presidential candidate running on a major party ballot line. My grandfather, Maurice Bloch, was very active in the campaign as Smith’s N.Y. State Assembly Leader. He was Tammany Hall’s Film head.
Kyra’s Closer runs on Channel 2.2. Digital channel reruns of primetime and theatrical hits have indelibly branded products from Lūme to Omega XL into consumers’ minds. Would Kyra rather candidates or Optimum Tax Relief sponsor The Closer? Why wouldn’t consultants want WCBS-TV Sales to integrate candidate’s broadcast ads into these digital feeds in synch with the local news spots that New York and New Jersey primary candidates buy if only because their commercials’ production values are higher than Omega XL’s? During the 2024 Congressional cycle, Rob Menendez covered national spots locally on Monk on COZI TV WNBC.2.
The funds Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’ SuperPAC spent to appeal to the audience to vote for Anyone but Cuomo exposes the real problem with today’s politics: in New York, the ads are moot to 65% of their audience. SuperPAC buyers earn full commission for telling people not to vote for people they can’t vote for.
