As the Michigan race for governor heats up in the final nine weeks of the campaign season, the Republican Governor’s Association is shifting $1.5 million in advertising money away from key voting markets in the race.

The RGA still has reserved $5.6 million in advertising time around the state through Nov. 6, but has shifted $1.5 million from TV spending in metro Detroit and Grand Rapids, the two largest population — and voting — centers in the state.

JonThompson, spokesman for the RGA, said the advertising buys were made in the early summer before the Aug. 7 primary election whittled the number of candidates down to Republican Bill Schuette, the attorney general from Midland, and Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, the former Senate minority leader from East Lansing.

“We’re going to keep playing in the race to see what kind of impact we can make,” Thompson said. “We’re doing the same thing in other states. For right now, it’s more of a shift than a pulling back.”

He also noted that the State Solutions, a political action committee affiliated with the RGA, has invested more than $1 million in the state.

Republicans said these types of changes happen all the time and aren’t a cause for concern, but Democrats said recent polling has shown Whitmer with a significant lead in the race and the GOP is probably looking to other states, like Ohio and Florida, where the race for governor is much tighter.

“I think they’re just shifting their target times around. They’re fully committed to the race,” said Republican political consultant Tom Shields, of Lansing-based MRG. “But they’ll also be watching the polling carefully.”

Mario Morrow, a Detroit-based consultant, said the shift in cash means one of two things: either the RGA thinks it doesn’t need to spend money in the large suburban areas of Michigan to win the state; or there are other races around the country that are closer.

“It’s too early to concede the race, but the national organizations have a feel of where their money should go in closer contested races,” he said. “The polling is in Gretchen Whitmer’s favor and maybe they feel they can give up a state.”

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In addition to polling averages compiled by the RealClearPolitics website, which shows Whitmer with a consistent and current 9 percentage point advantage over Schuette, Morrow noted that the 2.2 million, record-breaking voter turnout in the August primary favored Democrats by a 140,000-vote margin.

“All of those factors have a very important value,” Morrow said. “I’m sure that’s not making the Schuette camp very happy.”

Craig Mauger, director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, reported Tuesday that the RGA and another affiliated political action committee have already spent $969,000 since the primary election, while the Democratic Governors Association has spent $678,000 in support of Whitmer’s candidacy.

“These ad buys can increase and decrease rather quickly and they could increase their buys later, so I try not to get too worked up when it goes up or down. But $1.5 million is a lot of ads,” he said. “In 2014, the RGA ran about $10 million in ads supporting Rick Snyder’s campaign.”

Schuette’s campaign spokesman John Sellek said the campaign is on the air with two new ads this week, one featuring a Detroit police officer who supports Schuette and another that’s critical of Whitmer.

“We cannot comment on the actions of other groups,” he said. “But media placements are strategically adjusted and reorganized on a daily basis and we expect to see a lot of activity on all sides.”

The DGA came out with a new ad Tuesday, highlighting Whitmer’s time as the Ingham County Prosecutor when she stepped in after the former prosecutor resigned amidst a prostitution scandal and created a domestic violence unit in the office.

The Whitmer campaign hasn’t started advertising since the August primary, but spokesman Zack Pohl said, "It's clear that Bill Schuette and the RGA's false and misleading attack ads against Gretchen Whitmer are falling flat. We are going to stay focused on the issues that will actually make a difference in people's lives right now, like fixing the roads and getting auto insurance costs under control, repealing the Retirement Tax, and cleaning up Michigan's drinking water."

Lansing political consultant Ed Sarpolus said when Republicans have pulled money out of the state in the past, such as when presidential candidate John McCain shifted resources out of Michigan three weeks before the 2008 election, other campaigns down the ticket also suffer. That year, Michigan Democrats helped propel Barack Obama to the presidency, flipped two congressional seats from red to blue and gained nine seats in the state House of Representatives.

“If you’re pulling money out of southeast Michigan, that hurts everyone else below on the ticket,” he said. “Forty percent of the vote is in southeast Michigan and sometimes perception becomes reality.”

Contact Kathleen Gray: 313-223-4430, kgray99@freepress.com or on Twitter @michpoligal.