Purple PAC Launches Significant Media Buy for Surging Sarvis

The Purple PAC, a “Super PAC” launched earlier this year, announced this morning that it is making a significant ad buy promoting Libertarian Party candidate Robert Sarvis for governor of Virginia.  The ad will run from Thursday, October 24th, through the end of the election in media outlets across the state.

“Both the Republican and Democratic candidates are right about each other,” said Edward H. Crane, president of the Purple PAC.  “Ken Cuccinelli is a socially intolerant, hard-right conservative with little respect for civil liberties.  Terry McAuliffe is a big government liberal with little respect for economic liberties.  Both have been engulfed in scandal.  Fortunately, Robert Sarvis offers an alternative, an agenda grounded in free markets and social tolerance.”

In a press release announcing the media purchase, Crane noted that a majority of Virginians — 59 percent, according to a recent poll — describe themselves as fiscally conservative and socially tolerant.  

“It’s time that the two major parties made room for those voters — a majority of the electorate — or risk losing them altogether,” he said.

“Robert Sarvis is running surprisingly well in Virginia despite having little money and no exposure in the gubernatorial debates,” continued Crane, a former national chairman of the Libertarian Party and founder and president emeritus of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank.  “A strong showing by Sarvis will tell the political class that purple voters cannot be ignored or taken for granted lest campaigns be put at risk.  And there’s no better set of campaigns to put at risk than the desultory campaigns of Ken Cuccinelli and Terry McAuliffe.”

Crane, who serves on the board of the Center for Competitive Politics, told the Washington Post that Purple PAC plans to spend at least $300,000 promoting Sarvis’s candidacy. 

The 30-second television spot can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/77629652

According to its latest filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Purple PAC had raised $575,000 as of June 30th.  Its two largest contributors were Kentucky horse breeder Richard Masson and CATO board member and options trader Jeffrey S. Yass, managing director of the Philadelphia-based Susquehanna International Group.  Masson and Yass, a longtime libertarian financier, had each contributed $250,000 as of that semi-annual filing.