http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/us/politics/super-pacs-not-campaigns-do-bulk-of-ad-spending.html

March 2, 2012

'Super PACs,' Not Campaigns, Do Bulk of Ad Spending

By JEREMY W. PETERS

The crucial role the "super PAC" now plays in modern presidential politics has been on vivid display in the week before the Super Tuesday primaries, as these outside groups have all outspent the campaigns and become their de facto advertising arms.

The super PACs supporting Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have poured nearly $4 million into advertising in Ohio ahead of the primary next week, accounting for most of the spending on commercials there in what has become an overwhelmingly negative contest.

Beyond Ohio the story is the same. The money spent by super PACs, another $8 million, continues to outpace what candidates themselves are willing and able to spend. Mr. Romney, whose campaign spent almost three times as much as it brought in during January, has chosen not to advertise in any Super Tuesday state but Ohio. He has committed about $1.2 million to advertising there, according to figures provided by media strategists.

Meanwhile, Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mr. Romney, has sunk about $7 million into advertising on broadcast television, cable and radio in the last month, blanketing the airwaves from Idaho to Georgia.

Mr. Gingrich has run no ads of his own in any state. But the super PAC that supports him, Winning Our Future, has committed $3.7 million to seven states.

Mr. Santorum only recently began receiving donations large enough to advertise in any significant way, leaving the affiliated super PAC, the Red, White and Blue Fund, to carry the weight in Ohio, where it has put about $500,000 into TV commercials. But Friday the campaign started making moves into other states, buying about $400,000 worth of broadcast time in Georgia, Ohio, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

The tone of the advertising in Ohio offers a telling example of how super PACs have assumed the role of attack machine. Of the 11 commercials pegged to the presidential election run on Ohio television since Feb. 1, all but one have been negative, according to Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group.

That positive ad was a 30-second spot by the pro-Romney super PAC featuring a former employee of Mr. Romney's, Bob Gay. Mr. Gay tells an uplifting story about the time his daughter went missing in New York and how Mr. Romney helped find her.

The other ads are more like one the pro-Gingrich super PAC is running in Atlanta. It features interviews with Gingrich supporters who offer critical observations about Mr. Romney.

"Mitt Romney?" says one man, sighing and rolling his eyes. A woman complains about rising gas prices. "We're looking at $5, $6 gas. Romney's not the type to pump his own gas," she says.

Another from the Santorum PAC begins, "How can Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama when on the vital decisions they're not that much different?"

Not all the attacks on Mr. Romney are coming from fellow Republicans. The super PAC supporting President Obama, Priorities USA Action, and the American Federation of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees are both running ads attacking Mr. Romney's opposition to the federal loan program that helped rescue the auto industry.

Despite the barrage, or because of it, there were fresh signs Friday that Mr. Romney was closing the gap in polls in Ohio. Just a few days ago he looked as if he might lose to Mr. Santorum. But a new Quinnipiac University poll shows the two in a dead heat, with Mr. Santorum drawing the support of 35 percent of likely Republican primary voters to Mr. Romney's 31 percent. That difference is within the poll's margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.

Helping Mr. Romney's rise could be his own negative ads and those from Restore Our Future, both of which have assailed Mr. Santorum as a creature of Washington who compromised his principles for political expediency.

"In the Senate, Rick Santorum voted for Planned Parenthood," one ad running in Ohio begins. It then cuts to a sound bite from a debate last week -- one that Mr. Romney and his campaign have seized on repeatedly in recent days -- in which Mr. Santorum explained himself. "When you're part of the team sometimes you take one for the team," he is heard saying. For emphasis, the commercial provides subtitles.

A Restore Our Future commercial uses a clip from that same moment in the debate last week in Arizona. The ad ends with the announcer's indictment: "Twenty years in Washington changed Santorum's principles."

Off the airwaves, candidates campaigned in states where their political fortunes rest.

Mr. Romney appeared in Bellevue, Wash., ahead of the caucuses on Saturday, where he stuck to an economic message and Mr. President Obama. In the evening, he appeared in Ohio, where Mr. Santorum had spent the entire day, reflecting how the state, with its blue-collar cache of voters, is crucial to his candidacy. Mr. Santorum barely mentioned Mr. Romney by name, but attacked his conservative credentials, borrowing from Lewis Carroll. "We need a choice," he said at a campaign appearance on Friday in Chillicothe, Ohio. "We don't need a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. We need a clear choice."

For his part, Mr. Gingrich seemed heartened -- even at ease -- by his standing in Georgia polls, which show him handily winning his home state. He made a four-city swing by chartered plane Friday around southern Georgia, his fifth consecutive day there. Never shy about taking on his Republican rivals, Mr. Gingrich mostly left them out of his remarks. He did, however, save some harsh words for Mr. Obama for apologizing to Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, after American soldiers burned Korans confiscated from prisoners.

"If I were president, I would have called Karzai and said, 'If you don't apologize for your soldiers killing Americans, we will be gone immediately,' " Mr. Gingrich said. "Good luck trying to survive without us."

Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Trip Gabriel contributed reporting.