I’ve gotten more information on Mayor Jerry Sanders’ new radio spots since I put up my first post this afternoon.
The Sanders campaign says the ads will run 28 times this week. It cost $6,590.
Compare that to Steve Francis’ first purchase — $200,000 for two weeks of television — and you’ll get an idea of the money gap that I wrote about in a full story that ran today.
One more thought on the Sanders ads: In the new Sanders radio spots, the mayor focuses on some of the less glamorous sides of City Hall, using such as such bureaucratic buzzwords as “deferred maintenance” and talking about long-term obligations. There’s little doubt that those are critical aspects to curing the city’s financial ills, something that will still need to be the primary task of whoever is mayor for the next four years.
But that made me think: It will be interesting to see what kind of traction Francis’ criticism of Sanders as a “caretaker” gets. That was essentially one of two criticisms of the incumbent offered by the challenger in his first two biographical ads introduced two weeks ago. (The other: that nothing was being done on the financial issues.)
It seems as if Sanders has gone some way in trying to advance the profile of his administration beyond the financial crisis. Sanders’ State of the City speech in January pushed more big-ticket items outside of the financial realm for the first time, picking up border congestion, Southern California’s water allotment and the expansion of the convention center as new talking points.