Kaine increases campaign ad money

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine is devoting more money for advertising.

Kaine’s campaign announced today they’ve spent an additional $3 million for ads on TV, radio, and in print and online. With the additional money, the Kaine campaign will have spent $7.5 million on advertising through the end of the campaign.

The campaign credits additional donors — last week the campaign was trumpeting that it had 40,000 individual donors, including 10,000 new ones in the past six weeks — for providing the cash to expand Kaine’s advertising reach.

Rival George Allen has now reserved more than $5 million in TV and radio ad time for October. Allen spokeswoman Emily Davis said the Allen campaign is “encouraged by strong support from Virginians throughout the Commonwealth that have given us the resources we need to remind voters of George Allen’s positive, proven record and pro-jobs growth plan.”

The ad spending by the actual candidates is in addition to spending they can’t control by independent outside groups. An analysis of Federal Election Commission data by the Virginia Public Access Project shows that those independent groups have spent between $7 and $8 million on ads and efforts opposing Kaine, and about $5 million on ads and efforts opposing Allen.

Yesterday, according to VPAP data, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee made a $400,000 ad buy against Allen, and today the Karl Rove-founded Crossroads GPS launched another ad against Kaine, this one saying Kaine supported the “cap and trade” energy legislation in Congress and that he’s “bad for small business, too liberal for Virginia.”

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