October 23, 2008 10:12 PM UTC

As McCain Cuts Spending In Colorado, His Poor Spokespeople Stammer On

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• by: Colorado Pols

As The Denver Post reports, John McCain’s campaign is cutting back in Colorado…just like every once-competitive tight Republican race:

Despite assertions that it was not cutting back on resources in the state, John McCain’s presidential campaign has drastically slashed television advertising at Colorado’s big three stations.

At the same time, national Republicans have canceled $600,000 worth of ads supporting incumbent GOP Rep. Marilyn Musgrave’s re-election bid. And the campaign arm of Senate Democrats pulled out of the Mark Udall-Bob Schaffer race, where recent polls show Udall, a Democrat, with a wide lead. Colorado’s days as a battleground state for the Nov. 4 election may be waning.[Pols emphasis]

McCain, who trails Barack Obama by an average of 5 percentage points in Colorado polls, this week bought a total of $305,550 worth of ads at KUSA-Channel 9, KCNC-Channel 4 and KMGH-Channel 7, according to records. That is a 46 percent decrease from the week before and a 56 percent slide from two weeks ago…

…”What this means is that the McCain campaign has sparse resources and is beginning to write places off,” said Jennifer Duffy, managing editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “Colorado polling is consistently looking bad for McCain. So it doesn’t surprise me that they are putting their resources elsewhere.”

You have to feel sorry for the McCain spokespeople at this point, because they’re left sounding a little like the old Iraqi Public Information Minister:

Members of both the local and national McCain campaign have repeatedly denied they would – or did – shift or cut back on resources, including ads, in Colorado. When asked about the drop at the three stations Wednesday, Tom Kise, spokesman for the campaign, refused to answer the question and instead discussed the ads themselves.[Pols emphasis]

“We are not pulling ads and will be on the air in Colorado through Election Day. While we won’t be discussing specifics of any buy, we reserve the right, like all campaigns do, including the Obama camp, to make strategic moves on a daily basis with our paid media efforts,” Kise said.

Not only are we not cutting back our ads, we’re actually winning in Colorado. In fact, we’ve already won. You just haven’t been told yet.