Voters in nine swing states will be seeing a lot of Joe Biden from now until Election Day — on TV, at least.
A new ad campaign from the Democratic presidential nominee starting Tuesday will target voters in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. President Trump won seven of those nine states in 2016, although he came within just a few percentage points of beating Hillary Clinton in Nevada and Minnesota as well.
The ad buys are a glimpse two months out from Election Day on the strategy by the former vice president and 36-year Delaware senator to piece together 270 Electoral College votes, a majority of 538 total.
Biden spending money on advertising in Minnesota and Nevada is one of the first signs of a more defensive posture from his campaign. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when Trump’s approval rating began dipping below 40%, the Biden campaign was boasting about potentially flipping states such as Texas and North Carolina to the Democratic column. Neither of those two states was included in the latest ad buy.
The Biden campaign has pledged at least $45 million to the ad campaign so far, which will include both television and digital spots. Ads in these states will harp on one theme: A Biden administration will not tolerate looting.
“Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted,” Biden says in the ad. “Fires are burning, and we have a president who fans the flames. He can’t stop the violence because for years he’s fomented it.”
For months, the GOP has hammered Biden and the Democratic Party for not responding strongly enough to the civil unrest, starting after the death of George Floyd in May, that has swept cities such as Kenosha, Wisconsin; Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis and Seattle. Early polling suggests that the president’s “law and order” message is beginning to win over Rust Belt voters, likely triggering this latest Biden campaign response.
“Joe Biden is spending $45M in one week because Americans now identify him as too weak to stand up to the lawless leftist rioters burning down American cities,” tweeted Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh in response to the news. “Voters have seen the weakness, seen him calling them ‘peaceful protestors’ while blaming police. The mob got Joe too.”
