Three lightning rod topics this legislative session – death with dignity, wind energy, and a tax on sugary beverages – have dominated the advertising airwaves, in an attempt to sway the minds of constituents and lawmakers alike.
According to WCAX public service co-ordinator Meredith Neary, the patient-directed death debate brought in the most dollars for her channel, with the death with dignity group Patient Choices spending just over $16,500, and the anti-physician assisted suicide group, the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Health Care, spending about $7,400.
They both ran TV ads that appeared at the height of the Senate’s most heated debate so far, as death with dignity legislation saw a contentious rewrite. Both groups ran ads just before and during a marathon, emotional three-day debate in the Senate.
On its website, Patient Choices features its 2013 TV ad, featuring Danville farmer Penelope Lowe arguing that the choice to die remains “voluntary” and comes in the context of “strong safeguards.”
Patients Choice ad. YouTube screen capture
Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare ad. YouTube screen capture
The Vermont Alliance for Ethical Health Care’s website campaign featuresan ad from March 2011. Nurse Lynne Caulfield explains how her husband outlived his expected death from pancreatic cancer for three years, and argues that medical forecasts are often simply an “educated guess.”
The group didn’t return a request for comment or for information about new ads.
Another area with prominent advertising is the debate over levying a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, as Pete Hirschfeld reported on Monday in the Times Argus and Rutland Herald. Mike Fisher, chair of the House Health Care Committee, which backs the new tax, told Hirschfeld that he’d like to know how much both sides spent on advertising so far this legislative session.
Fisher called for new legislation to require that interest groups who advertise disclose spending details within 24 hours, rather than three times a year, as is currently the law. Any advertising on legislative topics done between Jan. 1 and March 31 is now only reported in late April.
The American Heart Association’s Tina Zuk, whose organization is backing a new tax on sugary drinks along with many others, told VTDigger that she’d spent about $4,600 so far on two radio ads, with WNCS and WDEV, and a Web ad on VTDigger’s site.
Zuk said the ad buy was sparked by full-page newspaper ads by the beverage industry, targeting specific lawmakers on the House Health Care Committee.
“They [the beverage industry] have these incredible advertising and marketing budgets, in the millions of dollars. … They spend a great amount of money as well, whenever this issue comes up, to defeat it,” said Zuk.
Zuk said that nationwide the beverage industry has spent $16 million more than the health care community and the campaign contributed to a recent defeat of a sugar sweetened beverage tax proposal in Washington state.
She also criticized the industry’s Vermont ads as partly misleading, for failing to mention sugar at all. The ad, she says, erroneously implies that all drinks would be taxed and that drink prices on average would rise by 50 percent.
Andrew MacLean, a lobbyist for the Beverage Association of Vermont, wouldn’t tell VTDigger how much his client has spent to advertise against the tax. MacLean says his client will comply with lobbyist disclosure requirements in April.
“This is a huge tax that’s being levied at one particular industry, in an area where its connection to obesity is not set by science,” argued MacLean. He said any straightforward comparison of ad spending wouldn’t be an “apples to apples comparison,” because the American Heart Association isn’t being targeted, and isn’t looking at huge tax payment or a huge stigma on its products.
In the first six months of 2011, the American Beverage Association spent $18,000 on advertising and almost $31,000 on other lobbying expenses, according to records from the Secretary of State.
Renewable Energy Vermont, the state’s renewable energy trade association, will run ads on WCAX from March 13 to March 22, for which it paid $1,500. In late January and mid-February the group paid a total of $6,620 for two separate ad runs.
Renewable Energy Vermont typically lobbies in the interests of the renewable energy industry, and has opposed a much-discussed moratorium on utility scale wind projects this session.
Noted conservative Super PAC Vermonters First also re-appeared on the airwaves with a couple of ads last week, as VTDigger reported.
Retired political scientist Eric Davis doubts these ads are always a sound investment for these interest groups, in terms of delivering results.
As traditional broadcast networks nationally lose viewers, with consumers turning to other media platforms, the audience is shrinking, he said.
More importantly, Davis said, “In order for these to affect legislators, it has to be an indirect thing. … It has to generate public concern that then gets transmitted to legislators. It’s a two-step process. … I’m not aware of any evidence that ads like this are effective in producing that two-step communication.”
“These people have to get sufficiently exercised to send them [legislators] an email. That’s a lot harder than influencing a voter to vote in an election,” said Davis.
“Sometimes these ads just reinforce the perceptions that people already have, rather than mobilize them. I’m not convinced these ads are a very effective campaign tool.”
Senate Government Operations Chair Jeanette White, D-Windham, didn’t return requests for comment. Her committee may take up Fisher’s push to step up advertising disclosures next week, as her committee works to overhaul elections and campaign finance law.
[DISCLOSURE: Zuk’s American Heart Association paid VTDigger $600 for sponsorship spots from Feb. 20 to March 6. VTDigger also held sponsorship spots from the following groups: Patient Choices, which paid $750 for spots from January to February; Renewable Energy Vermont, which paid $1,200 for spots from January to February; and Ridgeline Protectors, paying $1,000 for spots in January.]
For an example of Zuk’s radio ads and a newspaper ad from the Stop the Vermont Beverage Tax Coalition, click on those links.
This story was updated at 9:55 a.m., March 6, 2013, to add to the list of issues groups relevant to this story that paid VTDigger for sponsorship spots.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Warring words: Issue advertising seeks to sway Vermonters – and lawmakers.
