Why Democratic super PACs aren’t focused on attacking Trump

Democratic super PACs are taking an unusual approach in this year’s presidential race: They’re not focusing on former President Donald Trump. A significant majority of this cycle’s spending by pro-Democratic outside groups — which typically function as attack dogs — is going to ads aiming to drive positive perceptions of Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s a particularly striking shift after a majority of similar groups’ spending in both 2016 and 2020 was focused on driving up Trump’s negatives, a PMG analysis of ad spending found. That stark contrast reflects a challenging reality: Harris began her abbreviated campaign comparatively unknown to many voters, setting off a frenzy to define her in the final weeks of the election. That’s particularly pronounced because this is Trump’s third presidential run in a row — and even after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and his four indictments and conviction earlier this year, voters’ views of him are largely set. There may be little Democrats can do to persuade most voters about Trump. Instead, since Harris’ elevation, Democrats have bet that their dollars are better spent reintroducing voters to the vice president, from the basics of her biography to playing defense on immigration and attempting to lay out her vision for the economy. Republican super PACs, meanwhile, are sticking to the conventional playbook, going all-in on criticizing Harris, with few mentions of Trump. The result is that voters in key swing states, including Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, are being bombarded with far more content about Harris, both positive and negative, than about Trump. “Voters have nothing, no information they need to collect, to inform their decision on Donald Trump,” said Evan Roth Smith, lead pollster for the Democratic firm Blueprint, which has run testing on the efficacy of various presidential ads. “All the information that voters need, for the voters who have yet to make up their minds in this election, is about Kamala Harris.” Take Philadelphia, the media market that has attracted the most presidential ad spending over the past three weeks. The most-aired ad in the metro area over that period is from the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. and goes after Harris on the issue of immigration — while making no mention of Trump. By contrast, the most-aired ad from a Democratic outside group is from FF PAC, the pro-Harris juggernaut, and features Harris talking about the middle class and includes just one line going after Trump on taxes. Since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, about 80 percent of Democratic-aligned groups’ outside spending has been supportive of her candidacy, rather than attacking Trump, according to the PMG analysis of Federal Election Commission records. That’s a big difference compared to past election cycles: Over the same period in 2020, about 60 percent of Democratic outside spending went toward opposing Trump. And in 2016, 87 percent of Democratic outside spending in the late summer and early fall was to push negative content about Trump. It’s also in sharp contrast to the approach of GOP outside groups, which have stuck with the traditional super PAC attack role and devoted nearly 90 percent of their independent expenditure dollars to attacking Harris since she replaced Biden. The anti-Trump content has far from vanished: Harris’ campaign has run with ads seeking to tie the former president to Project 2025, the unpopular Heritage Foundation policy framework from which Trump has tried to distance himself, and it released an ad last week featuring a survivor of childhood sexual abuse talking about the importance of abortion rights and blaming Trump for state bans. But the overall Democratic message flooding the airwaves isn’t that kind of attack. The share of anti-Trump content is notably lower than even a few months ago, when Biden was at the top of the Democratic ticket, and both candidates were well-established in the public eye. American Bridge 21st Century, which oversees the second-largest, pro-Democratic super PAC operating in the presidential election this cycle, ran primarily negative ads for most of the year, with its first contrast ads — part of a strategy targeting lower-propensity female voters on the issue of abortion — launching earlier this month. The anti-Trump ads, which included a veteran talking about Trump and the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, were part of a strategy aiming to reach voters who pay less attention to politics. The goal was to remind them of Trump’s negative qualities, said Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge. The strategy complemented positive ads about Harris from her campaign and other groups, he said, in part because most voters did not need to learn more about Trump. “Anybody who turns on CNN once a week or opens a newspaper engaged in political reporting, generally speaking, we find they have quite a good memory of why they don't like Donald Trump,” Dennis said.

AML TROIB News