As Hurricane Matthew looms, Clinton campaign delays Weather Channel ads

As Florida prepares for Hurricane Matthew’s threat to its coast, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is asking the Weather Channel to delay its advertising on the cable network.

The campaign asked the channel to hold off on the ads, which have aired on the Weather Channel throughout the course of the general election season, until after the storm passed.

Earlier this week, Politico first reported that the campaign had bought more air time in Florida for their television ads, spending $63,000 to run them on the Weather Channel for five days starting Thursday.

Critics cried foul over the ad campaign, accusing Clinton of trying to score political points from a natural disaster that could leave hundreds without homes along the Southeast seaboard.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, questioned the wisdom of the move, despite the heightened viewership the Weather Channel gets during storm seasons.

“There’ll be a lot of people watching the Weather Channel,” Graham said in an interview with CNN Thursday. “But I don’t know if they want to see a politician talking about politics.

“They probably want to know about their family and friends and loved ones,” he added. “So I don’t know if that’s smart.”

Kristy Campbell, the former press secretary for ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, expressed her reservations about the ads more bluntly on Twitter:

But the campaign later explained in a statement that the Weather Channel buy was “less than 1% of” their ad boost, which was meant to go into effect in multiple states this week.

“Earlier in the week we made changes to our TV ad reservations across hundreds of stations in several battleground states including Florida,” Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson said Thursday. 

And on a conference call with reporters, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook added that “since the storm has clearly become very serious we have asked The Weather Channel to roll back that buy until the storm is concluded.” 

“We don’t think that the voters in Florida need this election to get mixed up in their efforts to get information on this storm,” Mook added, “and so we’re working with The Weather Channel to make that happen.”

Clinton herself sent a tweet about the Category 4 storm early Thursday morning, urging caution and linking to a FEMA resource on preparing for Hurricane Matthew: 

In:
• Hurricane Matthew
• Hillary Clinton
• Lindsey Graham