The reading here is a little tough, but it really shows the underbelly of our political process. As you know, Civitas has been looking at the problems with big money and politics. We have focused not only on the big, and sometimes unaccountable, money that flows into the system, but also on what it is being spent. If you live in the St. Louis, MO area and have seen a recent ad (shown on KSDK Channel 5) and perhaps other stations, you have an excellent introduction to how a very negative ad can hit the airways. Here is the 30-second commercial from an organization called Liberty Principles PAC.
What we know is that it is directed against an office-holder named Sam McCann. We don’t know exactly what office he holds or to what political party he belongs. With a little research, we find 
that he is an Illinois state senator representing the 50th state senate district. The PAC criticizes him for being too close to Illinois Speaker of the House, Mike Madigan, a Democrat, even though McCann is a Republican. What we know about “Liberty Principles” is what we can find on the website of our friends at OpenSecrets.org. We invite you to do the same. The bottom line is that it’s not just where the money comes from, it is how it is spent to present voters with an extremely distorted and negative view of a somewhat mysterious candidate.
The Illinois 50th state senatorial district has a population of 217,000. Yet the ad is airing to the 2.8 million people in the St. Louis metropolitan area. The senatorial district does not touch the St. Louis area, although some households must be in Channel 5’s viewing area.
So, why is all this money being spent in the St. Louis metropolitan area for a district north of the area and barely reached by a local television station? Perhaps one of our readers can enlighten us on this?
