Already finding the 2014 mid-term elections a little passe? Already pining for the next presidential election in 2016? Well, there’s good news for you: The first 2016 presidential ads have been aired! And, not surprisingly, they were negative, and they both targeted Hillary Clinton.

While presidential hopefuls have been angling for advantages in early primary states for months — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla) and his leadership PAC’s sudden interest in the Iowa Senate race, anyone? — these appear to be the first ads run on television that unmistakably target Clinton.

Kantar Media CMAG, a private firm that tracks all political advertising, identified two ads, one aired by the Emergency Committee for Israel and the other by the Republican National Committee, that appear to target Hillary Clinton. Kantar Media CMAG senior vice-president Elisabeth Wilner stopped short of saying the election had been kicked off, noting that ads featuring Clinton and other 2016 hopefuls have been spotted, but none in such a specific context. Neither ad mentions the word “president,” but both unequivocally criticize her.

In the ad run by the Emergency Committee for Israel, below, Secretary of State John Kerry is accused of “slandering Israel” for certain comments he made, and the narrator lists all of the national Jewish organizations and Democratic politicians who criticized him for doing so.

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“So why not Hillary Clinton?” the narrator asks.



The ad run by the Republican National Committee also stops short of ever asking the viewer to not vote for Clinton, but mocks her for saying that she and Bill Clinton were deeply in debt when they left the White House. The ad, titled “Stop Hillary,” appears to be a shorter version of a web ad produced by the RNC, and a continuation of the “Stop Hillary” campaign already well underway. While not a totally new message from the RNC, it does appear to be the first time the group has taken its message to the airwaves.



The RNC ad, with its explicit anti-Hillary message, would seem to qualify as an independent expenditure — an ad that urges voters to act in a federal election — but was not reported to the Federal Election Commission because Clinton is not yet a candidate. According to Kantar Media, the ad was run only once or twice, on cable news network CNN.

The ad run by the Emergency Committee for Israel was also not reported to the FEC, but was aired on broadcast stations in New York City and Washington, D.C. Kantar Media reported spotting the ad eight times, and a review of Federal Communications Commission records for network television channels in those markets found invoices for the ad to run several times during Good Morning America on ABC stations and on NBC’s Today Show. The FCC records show the Emergency Committee for Israel paid $24,000 for their eight airings — $3,000 for every 30 second spot.

According to those FCC filings, the target of the ad was Secretary of State John Kerry — not Clinton — and the ads were filed as “non-candidate issue ads” not as political attack ads that might need to be reported to the FEC.



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