Pre-Super Tuesday campaign media spending by Super PACS has heated up in the past few days as Super Tuesday approached.
That is according to the latest FEC figures as reported by the Sunlight Foundation. Super PACS had to file spending reports with the FCC by the end of last week.
According to Sunlight's online Super PAC tracker, the Restore Our Future PAC backing Mitt Romney reported it had spent over $4.6 million on media buys between Feb. 28 and March 5, including a $416,000 national cable buy. Virtually all Restore America's ads were attacks on either Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich.
TV stations early last week had said pre-Super Tuesday spending had been light, but Kantar Media/Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG) had predicted aggressive spending by Mitt Romney and the pro-Romney Super PAC in the days just prior to the March 6, when 410 delegates are at stake in contests--primaries and caucuses--in Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia, and Alaska.
The Winning Our Future PAC backing Gingrich added another $1.8 million in TV ad buys to the total between Feb. 28 and March 2, all supporting Gingrich rather than opposing his competition, while Santorum's Red, White and Blue fund was not giving up much green to TV, spending only about $250,000 on TV ads between Feb. 28 and March 3, again in support of their candidate.
Those are the top three Super PACS in terms of expenditures totaling over $50 million among them.
