Ganley is up. And down.

Back in July I said this about the Senate candidacy of Republican Tom Ganley:

While Ganley has all the cash he needs to mount a credible challenge, it's TBD whether Ohio voters will afford him any sense of legitimacy. I'd expect Ganley to start up with some advertising in the last quarter of 2009 in order to gauge any poll movement before deciding whether to spend even more of his own wealth to aggressively go after Portman.

Well, right on cue he's up on the air.

You can view his one minute commercial by clicking here. (for some reason, his video is not embeddable - a strange decision considering how important a function that is to best share video on the interwebs)

Since he announced, Ganley has shown to be consistently unknown and running in the single digits far behind Portman.

With this ad, the clock starts ticking. The next poll from Quinnipiac will come out in about two months. Since he's now on the air, Ganley must show some serious improvement if he wants to pull the trigger and go all out in the primary. Remember, this is his own fortune he is spending - if he's as conservative as he claims to be, he won't waste it.

But, speaking of wasting it, there is one thing about his ad that does bring some concern. At the 44 second mark, the seal of the FBI is shown. I wonder if Ganley knew about this provision of the US Code:

Unauthorized use of the FBI seal is subject to prosecution under federal criminal law, including Sections 701 and 709 of Title 18, United States Code.

Now, it's possible Ganley did get authorization. But that is something they will want to check on before running the ad too extensively.

Either way, Ganley faces a tough hill to climb. He's not going to out-conservative Portman. And considering Portman's massive fundraising haul, he'd be taking a mighty risk trying to out-spend him.

The question is whether Republican voters are interested in nominating a rookie outsider, or a voice of experience with a record of success in Congress.

Personally, I think we already have one too many rookies in Washington.