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What Clinton's Texas Ad Buy Means for Election Day

Adam Schultz/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
It may be a way to prompt the Republicans to respond to the prospect of Texas turning purple.

From Texas Standard

Since political ads are typically the single biggest expense of a presidential campaign's bottom line, you choose your battles – or battlegrounds – carefully. There's not much room for waste, which is why this got our attention: Hillary Clinton has purchased ad time in four of the five biggest cities in Texas.

The last part of the ad reads in black and white: "For Texas and America, Hillary for President!" So does this mean the Clinton campaign sees Texas as a serious battleground state?

 

Paul Stekler, chair of the Radio-Television-Film department at the University of Texas at Austin, directed the documentary, "Vote for Me, Politics in America." He says the ad is text-heavy and "not exactly visually spectacular."

"I think it's mostly something that was thrown together to be able to, essentially, make the Republicans spend money in Texas," he says, "a place where they have no business losing a presidential election."

What you'll hear in this segment:

– How much the campaign may have spent for the weeklong ad

– Which of Texas' neighboring states are in play for Clinton

– What the ad might prompt the Republican National Convention to do in response

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