NEW YORK (AP) — A Democratic group is launching a up-to-date $140 million advertising campaign aimed at weakening Donald Trump’s support among one of his most devoted voting blocs: rural voters.
American Bridge 21st Century’s ads will begin airing Monday in the northern battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. They target swing voters in smaller media markets that are less saturated with political advertising and where they want to reach people, particularly women, who may be undecided.
“We should be competing everywhere,” said Bradley Beychok, co-founder of America Bridge, who said Democrats have too often shied away from rural counties as they have focused on winning over base voters in more urban and suburban areas. In the states that are expected to decide the November election, “margins are important,” he said.
The ads are part of the group’s broader $200 million effort to defeat Trump and are aimed at suburban and rural areas such as Erie, Johnstown and Altoona, Pennsylvania; Flint, Saginaw and Bay City, Michigan; and Wausau and Rhinelander, Wisconsin.
They include testimonials from voters expressing concern about a second Trump term. The first round focuses on abortion rights and access to health care. In one, a nurse who is a mother and grandmother laments the overturn of Roe. v. Wade, highlighting Trump’s own words on the subject. In another case, a gynecologist tells the heartbreaking story of an abortion behind schedule in pregnancy after discovering that the child she was carrying had a fatal anomaly.
Future ads will focus on topics like IVF and democracy and freedom, as they try to support voters who are turned off by politics and may not be paying much attention to the November election understand what’s at stake.
“People are afraid of Trump. And in some cases you have to remind them why,” said Beychok, who said first-person testimony was the most effective way to reach voters given voters’ widespread distrust of politicians.
People “want to hear from voters who look like them and have similar stories,” said Eva Kemp, the group’s vice president of campaigns. She said they spent years recruiting participants through door-to-door canvassing and other outreach, identifying over 1,500 potential votes across the three states and interviewing hundreds.
They include Lori Cataldi, 57, a nurse who works for a local community hospital in central Pennsylvania and talks about abortion rights in her ad. “If we re-elect Trump, what will women lose next?” she asks.
She said she was contacted by the group after her husband wrote a letter to the editor that was published in the local newspaper and hopes her ad will attract the attention of other women who may be undecided or put off by the current political climate become.
“I hope it only touches people who might be frustrated, who might have had enough of it. I really hope it comes across in a way that makes them stop… and say, as tired as they are, ‘I should really take a good look at this,'” she said.
She urged voters to look beyond “trivial issues” like the candidates’ ages or their alleged crimes. “Women need to pay attention to what is important to women. And I hope it speaks to other women who feel the same way as me,” she said.
Trump’s dominance in rural counties was crucial to his success. About 60% of voters who live in diminutive towns or rural areas voted for Trump in 2020, compared to 38% who voted for Biden, according to AP VoteCast.
This trend continued in this year’s Republican primaries. In early voting states, between 58% and 66% of voters from diminutive towns and rural areas supported Trump, according to the data. He was less popular with suburban and urban voters.
Swing voters make up a diminutive portion of the electorate, especially in a year when both major party candidates are so well known.
But the Democratic group has identified several million swing voters who they say fit into four broad categories of potentially persuaded voters: gentle partisans, volatile voters who like to switch between parties, anti-MAGA conservatives, those from the more extreme elements of the Republican Party being turned away, etc., as well as “double doubters,” as voters are called this cycle, who are turned off by candidates from both parties.
The voters in these groups are predominantly women and come from rural and suburban areas.
“Democrats should have learned by now that women have saved democracy one election after another since Trump was elected in 2016,” Beychok said.
Another ad features Susan Pryce, 74, a retired nurse who lives in Derry, Pennsylvania, who became involved in the project after loaning her neighbor a laptop at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to record a follow-up interview. She cited a range of reasons why she doesn’t support Trump, from his comments denigrating the behind schedule Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war, to his past bragging about sexually abusing women.
“I feel like this is the most important election I’ve ever voted in,” she said, choking up as she described her family’s long military history. Her father was a prisoner of war in Germany for 21 months during World War II and her husband is a disabled Vietnam War veteran.
“I want to honor everything they sacrificed,” she said, and ensure that “there is a democracy here for us.”
“I want my grandchildren to know that a good leader seeks this office to serve, not for personal advantage or personal power,” she continued. “I want them to know that a good leader respects the Constitution – the Constitution to which all of their loved ones who have served in office have sworn an oath… that no one is above the law.” That every one of us, too the people at the top who must respect the rule of law,” she said.
She also expressed concern about women’s rights, describing how women previously needed permission from their father or husband to undergo certain medical procedures or obtain a credit card.
“When Roe v. “When Wade was overthrown, I just felt like I had suddenly become a second-class citizen,” she said. “I’m really worried that this is just the tip of the iceberg, that we’re going backwards.”
She said she lives in a rural area that is very conservative, but noticed a neighbor had recently put up a “BYEDON” sign, which gave her hope.
“I really believe that just in the last year and interactions with people, there are more people who are like me but are just calm and going about their lives,” she said. “With our voice we will make our voice heard.”
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Associated Press poll reporter Linley Sanders contributed to this report from Washington.
