BREAKING: Pro-McSally Group Reserves $7.7M TV Ad Buy For Autumn; Most Expensive Race In The Nation, Indeed

Arizona is, indeed, going to be home to the most expensive Senate race in the nation. Further evidence comes today with this information that the largest pro-McSally SuperPAC has reserved $7.7 MILLION in TV ad time during the last eight weeks of the campaign.

A notorious mailer from DefendArizona, 2018

DefendArizona - which spent more than $22M trying to help Martha McSally defeat Kyrsten Sinema to fill Jeff Flake's Senate seat - snatched up $2.2M on Tucson's stations, and nearly $5.5M in the Phoenix market. KNXV (Ch.15, Phoenix) alone, received an order for more than three-quarters of a million dollars in 30-second bites.

DefendArizona (aka DefendMcSally, or aka AttackKelly) started out in 2018 as a locally-funded committee to support McSally in both the primary and the election. However, the McConnell-affiliated Senate Leadership Fund quickly became took it over as its Arizona affiliate in the general election, pouring more than $16.5M in the final weeks of the battle for the open seat.

DefendArizona spokesperson Barrett Marson declined to tell Arizona's Politics where the funding will be coming from in 2020, but this week's reservation came on the same day that the Senate Leadership Fund made similar reservations in Colorado, Maine, Iowa and North Carolina. (And, in Kentucky, through an apparently-affiliated group.)

The Democrats have their own SuperPAC set up. Advancing Arizona already spent in seven figure territory in the latter 1/3 of last year. Presumptive Democratic nominee Mark Kelly is the best-funded Senate candidate in the nation and has been running his own ads, too.

Other groups on both sides of the heavyweight air war have also been running ads.

(h/t and thanks to Advertising Analytics for computing the total size of the ad reservation.)

If you would like to show your appreciation for Arizona's Politics reporting, please consider donating to our pool to support OTHER journalism-related nonprofits. http://bit.ly/AZpDonate 

We welcome your comments about this post. Or, if you have something unrelated on your mind, please e-mail to info-at-arizonaspolitics-dot-com or call 602-799-7025. Thanks.