Trump woos Florida mail voters with new anti-Biden ads as his campaign returns to TV
After hitting a brief pause on TV spending, President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is back on air in Florida and several other early voting states, campaign manager Bill Stepien said Monday.
Stepien, in a call with reporters, said the campaign had returned to the airwaves with two new commercials in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona — states that will collectively send out millions of mail ballots weeks before Nov. 3, Election Day.
Florida’s election officials will send mail ballots to overseas and military voters on Sept. 19. Most mail ballots will be mailed between Sept. 24 and Oct. 1, though voters can request a mail ballot through the U.S. Postal Service until shortly before the election.
“We’ve adjusted wisely our strategy on ad spending to reflect these voting dates, as voters have absentee ballots on their kitchen tables and the choice between Donald Trump or Joe Biden in front of them,” said Stepien. “We want to make sure these ads are ingrained and on their minds as they make these super important choices.”
The new ads, which reflect the campaign’s attempts to frame Biden’s candidacy, attack the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee as an “empty vessel for the radical left” who will raise taxes and give “amnesty” to undocumented immigrants. One ad, which features a woman of color silently flipping cue cards with ominous messages about a Biden presidency, is intended to appeal to the “silent” Trump voters, who Stepien said are being “undercounted” by polls that show the president’s losing to Biden in Florida and other battleground states.
Spanish-language versions of the two ads are running in Florida and Arizona, states with large Hispanic voting blocs. The ads are accompanied by a national cable ad buy, Stepien said.
Monday’s announcement followed a brief halt to TV spending by the Trump campaign amid a staff shakeup. As part of that, Stepien was made campaign manager and Trump brought back Susie Wiles, the political adviser who helped Trump to a win in Florida in 2016.
As of last week, the Trump campaign had at least $36 million in TV time purchased in Florida in September, October and November, according to Advertising Analytics, a firm that tracks campaign ad buys. The firm told the Miami Herald Monday that the Trump campaign had placed close to $2.8 million for the ads in Florida, with half of it spent in the Orlando and Tampa TV markets.
The Biden campaign, meanwhile, has remained on air in Florida and is spending heavily in all of the state’s 10 media markets with messages about COVID-19, Venezuela and healthcare, a campaign official told the Miami Herald.
“No ad can distract from the jobs and lives lost in Florida from Donald Trump’s failure to respond to this pandemic,” Biden spokeswoman Carlie Waibel said in a statement. “Floridians are looking for a leader who will both lead us out of this crisis [and] help rebuild our economy to ensure it’s working for all Americans, which is what they will get when they elect Joe Biden in November.”
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 4:30 PM.
