The NRCC won't need to pull any of its ads off the air in the NY-23 race because both of its spots are attacks on Democrat Bill Owens.
While Politico reported last Sunday that the NRCC would spend $200,000 to $300,000 on ads during the final 10 days of the race that would "focus on Owens and Scozzafava," an NRCC official tells me that, in fact, their group has only been running the anti-Owens ads for the past two weeks. One NRCC ad that stopped running a few weeks ago featured a message that supported Scozzafava and hit Owens, the official says.
RNC chairman Michael Steele announced today:
Effective immediately, the RNC will endorse and support the conservative candidate in the race, Doug Hoffman. Doug's campaign will receive the financial backing of the RNC, and get-out-the-vote efforts to defeat Bill Owens on Tuesday.
I've asked people at the RNC/NRCC for more details on exactly what resources they're going to devote to Hoffman and will update this post if/when they get back to me. Although it's probably too late to buy up more ad time, Republicans could certainly help out by putting more boots on the ground in the final 72 hours to get out the vote. A Democratic congressional staffer told me last night that most staff of one New York Democrat's office is heading up to NY-23 to get out the vote for Owens this weekend.
Update: An RNC official says the organization will spend money on phonebanking, ads, and sending staffers to get out the vote for Hoffman, but the official declined to get into details on how much money the RNC will be spending. A Republican source tells me that it's not, in fact, too late to make a new ad buy in the district.
