From an AlterNet Story, back in 2003:
"Back in the 1970s, political reformers targeted airtime as a place to economize on campaign costs. A federal law was enacted requiring stations to give candidates the lowest "unit rate" -- the cheapest price for broadcast time available, including any discount offered by stations to their best customers.
Sounds great -- but then a loophole opened that could be called the "consultants protection act." If a commercial advertiser, or another candidate, is willing to pay the regular rate, you and your puny political rate get bumped. To avoid getting preempted in this manner, candidates can pay as much as five times more than the political rate."
How does this affect the NC-08 and NC-11 races, which have been ranked in the top 50 races in the country?
During a Presidential year, or in a year with Statewide Races on the ballot (such as Attorney General and U.S. Senate), Congressional challengers face an uphill battle in buying enough airtime. One doesn't have to match one's opponent dollar for dollar -- one has to be able to get one's message out, and respond to attacks. If sheer volume of ads determined behavior, we would all be riding around with a green gecko in our cars.
Here in North Carolina,we don't have any races further up on the ticket than Congress. We need to get rid of people like Charles Taylor and Robin Hayes, and a "Blue Moon Election" is just the time to do it. A dollar can buy five dollars worth of prime ad time in this race.
The Netroots has endorsed Larry Kissell, who is running in NC-08. He is about to break the $5,000 mark from Netroots ActBlue contributions. He's raised nearly $30K from all blog links, including the wonderful work done by the fearless reporters at BlueNC.
Your dollar goes further down here. In Cabarrus County (where I am a former party chair) we have this fabulous headquarters for a few hundred dollars a month! Our local party is ready for the ground game, and our local College Democrats Organization, located in NC-08 is ready to go.
Go, Larry, go!
I'd sure like to see who else fits into that "Blue Moon" category -- just add the tag to the story if they do.