Bush ads flood TV while Kerry conserves

WASHINGTON – President Bush assails rival Sen. John Kerry on intelligence reform, arguing in a new television ad that the Democrat’s pledge to fix the system is at odds with his record and concluding, “There’s what Kerry says, and then there’s what Kerry does.”

The commercial, which begins airing Monday, shows Kerry saying, “I will immediately reform the intelligence system.” The ad then claims Kerry was absent for many of the intelligence committee’s public hearings and proposed $6 billion in cuts to the intelligence budget after the first World Trade Center attack in 1993.

Kerry, like other Senate Republicans and Democrats, had sought reductions in intelligence spending after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Democrat also has pushed for Bush to adopt immediately the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, which highlighted failures in the U.S. system.

Chad Clanton, a Kerry campaign spokesman, accused Bush of resorting to “the politics of fear and distortion” because “the president lacks a plan.”

The Bush-Cheney campaign has committed a staggering $28 million to advertising in August, a sum that could still grow as strategists hone the campaign’s state-by-state game plan heading into the fall election.

Bush’s ad criticizing Kerry will run in local media markets in 19 battleground states and nationally on cable networks.

To counter Bush’s advertising effort when Kerry is off the air to save money, an affiliate of the Democratic National Committee has bought about $20 million worth of airtime, including a new $7 million expenditure to continue running ads next week that assail Bush on the economy. The Media Fund, a group of Democratic insiders, has spent $6 million on anti-Bush ads over the first two weeks of August in nine key states.

When combined, the two groups have run even or higher levels of ads than Bush in many local media markets in key battleground states in the first two weeks of August.

On Friday, the Bush campaign previewed an Olympics-oriented ad that notes there are “two more free nations and two fewer terrorist regimes” during the Summer Games, a reference to new governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The ad will run on national cable networks, and in a first for a presidential campaign, on a television network at 250 fitness centers in battleground states, a novel appeal to busy professionals who typically only watch TV from treadmills or stationary bikes. The Summer Games started Friday and end Aug. 29.

To more precisely target his message, Bush has turned to ClubCom Inc., a Pittsburgh-based company whose health club TV network reaches 8 million people a month who exercise at facilities including Gold’s Gym and PowerHouse Gym.

The ad will run on the network for two weeks starting Tuesday in clubs in 21 media markets in eight swing states – Arkansas, Florida, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon and Pennsylvania – as well as in Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Judging by the demographics of commercial health clubs, the ads will reach a very targeted clientele – mostly urban and suburban affluent and highly educated professionals age 25 to 44.