The Olympics brought to you by — a super PAC

The Summer Olympics are coming up, but if you think they’ll offer you a respite from the presidential campaign, think again.

The summer games will be peppered with political ads.

 

The Obama campaign has announced a $6.5 million major ad buy, including spots during the July 27 opening ceremonies.

But the biggest buy isn’t from either candidate. It’s from Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Republican Mitt Romney.

The committee will spend $7.2 million on Olympic TV spots in 11 key states, including Pennsylvania.

Restore Our Future hasn’t revealed anything about the content of ads for the Olympics, but the super PAC already has an ad that mentions Romney’s often-praised role in the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, when he was brought in to head a committee organizing the games.

“He rescued an Olympics hit by scandal,” an announcer says in the ad.

Muhlenberg College political scientist Christopher Borick said Olympics viewer demographics are probably of more interest to the campaigns than Romney’s connection to Salt Lake City.

“They often draw a little bit of an older audience.” Borick said of the games. “And for some events, like they usually have higher numbers of women in the audience. That, of course, is a key voting bloc.”

Expect patriotic themes in the ads and, of course, plenty of repetition.