Kamala Harris’ campaign is to launch a giant advertising drive in swing states after Labor Day, spending $170 million on slots in prime-time television alone, and $200 million on digital ads.
One of the campaign’s senior officials, Quentin Fulks, revealed the $370 million planned spend to The New York Times Saturday as Democrats gather in Chicago to see Harris crowned at the Democratic National Convention.
Fulks said the spending will be in the battleground states, suggesting a deepening belief in Harris’ circle that there are multiple viable paths for her to an election victory. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the campaign will spend double what Joe Biden’s election effort spent in 2020, while in Georgia it will spend four times what Biden did, and in Nevada six times.
The investment in Nevada reflects fears that it has trended Republican in the last four years and that while Harris has had a bounce since replacing Biden, the latest one there—a New York Times/Siena college poll published Saturday—puts her two points behind Trump.
Since Biden stepped aside from the race and Harris jumped in with his endorsement, she has seen record fundrasing, enabling the $350 million ad spend.
Ken Cedeno/Reuters
Spending more on digital ads than television reflects a “modern campaign,” Fulks, Harris’ principal deputy campaign manager, told The Times.
But it is the timing of the TV ads which is likely to concern Trump most: they are being booked in slots in prime time, including in NFL and NBA games, and also targeting shows with large female audiences, including the debut of the Golden Bachelorette, Abbott Elementary, Grey’s Anatomy, and Survivor. Booking the slots early makes it more difficult for Trump’s campaign to secure matching ones, while going after sports, which draw the largest audiences, shows that Harris believes she can draw male voters who had been trending toward Trump when Biden was the Democratic candidate.
The campaign is currently spending $150 million on ads running mostly in seven battleground states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—which were rushed out after she entered the race.
“We have to make sure that voters know her and at the same time, we have to make sure that we’re drawing a contrast with Trump,” Fulks told The Times.
Trump’s campaign will be concerned at the ambition of the Harris TV buy. He is relying on rallies and large spending by outside groups to buoy him.
Jeenah Moon/Reuters
Its most aggressive move has been to book daytime slots on Fox News, calculating that its audience outside primetime is more likely to include persuadable voters, particularly Republicans who voted for Nikki Haley in primaries and “other conservative-leaning independents.”
Trump’s campaign has fallen behind Harris in fundraising but is also relying on large outside spending by PACs to back it up.
One of them, Make America Great Again, Inc, is currently spending $100 million in swing states on ads calling Harris “the most radical liberal ever to run for President” and as a “soft-on-crime radical who is too dangerous for the White House,” CNN reported.
Less conventional ad spending has included Trump critic George Conway’s Anti-Psychopath PAC, which has booked slots on Fox News specifically in the Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster areas. The ads say, “Enjoy the rallies while they last, Donald Trump, because where you’re going [prison], you’re not going to be able to have any.”
