Expect a vicious general election

Florida’s exceptionally negative and expensive GOP presidential primary could soon give way to an even nastier general election, with experts predicting Category 5-level ad wars.

Blame the new super PAC campaign finance groups, Florida’s status as a must-win state, the increasingly poisonous political climate and the simple fact that negative advertising works.

Buried by an onslaught of negative advertising before Florida’s primary, Newt Gingrich saw a nine-point lead in the polls evaporate in little more than a week, and he ultimately suffered a double-digit loss.

“If you don’t like all this garbage, go buy a book,” said Tampa-based political consultant Chris Ingram, because it will be impossible to avoid negative ads on television in the coming months.

President Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain spent a combined $360 million on TV ads in the 2008 presidential election, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group. That amount is expected to rise substantially this year, though no firm estimates are available.

Tallahassee political consult Rick Wilson said he expects an “unbelievably vicious” campaign in Florida in the general election.

“I think it will be almost 100 percent negative,” Wilson said. “It’s going to be a bar fight.”

An unprecedented 92 percent of the political ads leading up to last Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary qualified as negative attacks, CMAG says.

Political experts say the ratio is usually closer to 40 percent negative and 60 percent positive.

Even more telling, 100 percent of the ads run by the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future were attack ads.

“This level of attacks just seems incredibly high,” said Michael Franz, an associate professor of government at Bowdoin College who studies political advertising as part of the Wesleyan Media Project.

“The implications for the general election, to the extent that it features super PACs, is likely to be far more negative than we’ve ever seen,” Franz said.

The rise of super PACs has intensified the already caustic political environment, experts say.

“These groups aren’t formed to go hand out bouquets of flowers to voters. They’re formed to do the dirty work,” Ingram said.

Super PACs can raise unlimited amounts of money and are more likely to go negative because they operate at arm’s length from the candidates, meaning the attacks cannot technically be linked back to a campaign.

“If there was a market test for super PACs, we just saw the full measure in Florida,” said Adam Goodman, one of the state’s top political ad makers. “The primary will embolden people who want to use super PACs because they were clearly effective. They were a major deal.”

The Obama administration has been struggling to sell its policies and will try to make the election a referendum on the president’s opponent, Wilson said.

On the other side, Republicans have been disappointed with their field of candidates and are motivated largely by their anger with Obama. The eventual Republican nominee and his supporters will work to stoke that anger with a relentless barrage of attack ads.

It costs $1.5 million to $2 million per week to have a strong presence in all 10 Florida media markets.

Romney and the super PAC supporting him spent $15.4 million compared with $3.7 million from Newt Gingrich and his supporters.

The $19 million slugfest — a huge dollar amount for what was essentially a two-week contest — will pale in comparison with the general election.

Obama spent about $37 million on advertising in Florida from April to November 2008 — nearly $11 million in the Tampa media market alone — according to the Times analysis of CMAG data.

Sen. John McCain spent roughly $8.3 million.

Based upon the premise that a Republican nominee must win Florida to capture the White House, advertising spending in the state is likely to increase dramatically from 2008.

The big difference? The Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court decision that corporations, labor unions and other interest groups can spend unlimited amounts on elections.

Total television advertising spending for all political races nationwide in 2012 could hit $3.2 billion, according to CMAG, a 52 percent increase from 2008.

The percentage of political advertising attributed to outside groups like super PACs doubled after the Citizens United decision, from 25 percent of all advertising in 2006 to 50 percent in 2010 according to a CMAG analysis.

“They’re basically anonymous,” Ingram said. “And that makes it a lot easier to be negative.”