ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Those campaign-style TV commercials clogging Minnesota's airwaves this spring are brought to you by the budget stalemate at the state Capitol.
There was a time when political ads were confined almost entirely to election years. But the simmering dispute over taxes and spending between Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and Republican legislative leaders have inspired interest groups on both sides to take to the airwaves anew in recent weeks.
"The Republicans are choosing to balance the budget on the backs of the middle class," intones a TV ad from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, a left-leaning interest group whose executive director said it would spend about $700,000 to air the ad for nearly a month on broadcast and cable stations statewide.
Other groups are getting in on the action. The two biggest state employee unions on Thursday launched a $300,000 TV campaign featuring a commercial with state workers expressing concern about a possible government shutdown.
Next week, the Coalition of Minnesota Businesses plans to launch its own broadcast and cable TV commercials with a competing message: "We need to correct a misperception that's being created that somehow this budget is cutting spending when it's clearly not," said Charlie Weaver, the executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership.
He said the exact spending was still being formulated but that it would not be as much as the Alliance for a Better Minnesota's total.
While partisans are unlikely to be swayed, the arguments are aimed at independent voters who will decide which party carries the day in the next election. In practical terms, it means the typical odd-year break from political commercials appears increasingly a thing of the past.
"I think the political landscape has changed, and we've entered a time when we'll continue to see independent organizations wade into the political waters like this whether it's over the budget or a specific policy issue," said Phil Krinkie, president of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota, which is weighing in with a cable TV commercial touting its fiscally conservative message.
So far, the biggest entrant has been the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, a coalition of unions and other liberal groups that first made its mark last year with campaign ads blistering Tom Emmer, the Republican candidate for governor. Denise Cardinal, the group's executive director, said the alliance decided to go on the air in a non-campaign year because of the importance of the issues involved to the group's membership.
The ad, narrated by a series of Minnesota residents, charges that the proposed Republican budget of $34 billion for the next two years would force "drastic cuts" and "eliminate jobs and increase our property taxes." It endorses Dayton's proposal to add another $1.8 billion mostly with a tax increase on the state's highest earners.
"This is just a way to remind people what really is at stake and have this conversation with them where they're at, which is in their living rooms folding laundry," Cardinal said. "Most of us are really busy and not paying attention to the intricacies of the Legislature."
While the ad is airing on TV stations statewide, customized versions that call out specific Republican state lawmakers are being targeted to cable stations in their districts. The ad will probably be taken down in about a week, Cardinal said, but the group has made fundraising pitches aimed directly at putting more advertising on the air — particularly if the state goes into a government shutdown on July 1, the day the next two-year budget cycle is supposed to start.
Weaver, of the business group, said his group's ad would probably target many of the same districts as the alliance.
He said the business-backed ad would endorse the argument of legislative Republicans that the state should spend no more in the next two years than the $34 billion it's currently projected to collect in that time. The business coalition has already sponsored radio, TV and online advertising with much the same message.
"We'd rather spend our money on things other than this, and I'm sure the alliance would too," Weaver said of the TV advertising. "But this fight over what's the appropriate level of government spending is such an important and critical fight that it's worth engaging."
Rep. Doug Wardlow, a freshman Republican from Eagan who unseated a Democratic incumbent in 2010, is on the list of lawmakers specifically targeted by a version of the alliance ad. He said it was unlikely to sway his refusal to consider spending more than $34 billion.
"People are concerned about real-life things and right now is not a time when they are really focusing on politics generally," Wardlow said. "Who pays attention to TV ads anyway?"
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