The money has just about all been spent by the candidates running for federal, state, and local office this year, enough money to shrink the national debt and buy a car for every man, woman, and child in the presidential swing state of Florida.
Voters have been bombarded with flashy television ads that are little more than sound bites by the campaigns that are often untrue and designed to appeal to poorly-informed voters who don’t spend the time or the energy to really study the issues or the candidates as they are too busy trying to make ends meet.
The biggest winners in a presidential election year are the local television stations and all the network and cable networks that get rich on all the money paid for television ads. There are more political roundtables analyzing every word said by the candidates and their campaigns that at the end of the day, it is hard to make sense out of any of it.
But the campaigning is just about over as we go to press and soon the nation will know if President Obama will be re-elected or whether Mitt Romney will win and have to go to work for a living.
It has been a bruising and often ugly campaign and that’s true on the local level as well. Chris Collins and Kathy Hochul have spent $4.9 million trying to win election in the 27th Congressional District and the polls have stayed pretty much the same all the way through.
John Ceretto and Robert Restaino have banged away at each other about what they will do in Albany for the residents of the 145th State Assembly District if they win the seat currently held by Ceretto and the race between for the former judge (Restaino) and the former Niagara County legislator (Ceretto) has had plenty of fireworks along the way.
And Republican Mark Grisanti seems to have weathered his loss of the Conservative line in his bid for re-election in the 60th State Senate District and looms a heavy favorite to turn back Democratic challenger Mike Amodeo and Conservative candidate Chuck Swanick, aided by the unofficial backing of the Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, who got the same-sex marriage vote he wanted from Grisanti.
Powerful Republican State Sen. George Maziarz looms a likely winner over Amy Hope Witroyl in the 62nd District that now includes the City of Niagara Falls, and if he wins, as expected, expect him and Democratic Mayor Paul Dyster to really go at it as the two men are political rivals to say the least.
Anyway, in a few short hours Election Day 2012 will go down in the history books and the cycle will start all over again before you know it. The pundits and roundtables will spend endless hours analyzing results and telling us what did and didn’t work for the winning and losing candidates. But at least the ads will be gone.
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