Sen. Flake's Decision To Oppose Iran Nuclear Deal Costs Arizona Economy* $305,000 (FOLLOWING MONEY IN ARIZONA'S POLITICS)

Last week, Arizona's Politics reported on a $445,000 ad blitz designed to persuade Arizona Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) to not become the only Republican Senator voting to approve the Iran nuclear deal.  The ad began running on Friday. On Saturday, Flake announced that he would vote against the deal when it comes before Congress in September.

On Monday, the dark money group funding the powerful ad - featuring a veteran who suffered severe injuries in Iraq from an Iranian-sponsored IED - canceled $305,000 worth of the ads scheduled on Phoenix television stations. (It never ran on Tucson stations.)

Mitchell Nye, the Director of Sales at KPHO (Ch.5) and KTVK (Ch.3), confirmed the blow (more than $100,000 to those two stations alone) to Arizona's Politics. "They decided to move their money to markets where they could still influence the vote."

Of course, the $140,000 that was spent was (a) found money that would not have reached Arizona if Flake had not (properly) waited to consider the actual language of the complex deal; and, (b) a drop in the bucket to the monies that will be spent during the 2016 election cycle.

* Arizona's Politics has not conducted an economic analysis of how much of each local television advertising dollar stays in the Arizona economy - or, of any multiplier effect. If Local First AZ - or, anyone else - has studied that, please reply in the comments section. We might include that in future articles.

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