Meredith McGehee:

Broadcast stations made money hand-over-fist this year on political advertisements even though it was a non-presidential election year.   Spending on TV ads in federal and gubernatorial races topped $1 billion, according to the Wesleyan Media Project.

One-quarter of that spending (about $250 million) came from groups that are supposedly independent of the candidates.  And $100 million of that spending came from “dark-money” groups that don’t disclose their donors even though they are spending millions to affect the outcome of elections.  Of course, many of the ads aired by these non-candidate groups were negative, and many were run in barely masked coordination with a candidate.  For example, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell (R) and others put “B-Roll” on the Internet so that outside groups could copy parts of the footage and use it in their ads.  In North Carolina, the campaign manager of Senator-elect Thom Tillis (R)publicized a 1,000-word plan that detailed what kind of ad buys were needed to assist the Tillis’ campaign.  Yet, somehow we are supposed to believe there was no coordination.