Democratic groups flood Pennsylvania with anti-Trump coronavirus ads

It may seem as if politics has come to a halt these days — until you turn on the television. Several Democratic political action committees have bought millions of dollars of airtime in Pennsylvania to slam President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis amid a national moment of fear and frustration.

The groups are specifically targeting the battleground states Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan to call out Trump’s early downplaying of the severity of the virus and actions they say have put the nation at further risk.

“This campaign right now is a referendum on how the president is going to handle this horrible situation and how it bleeds into the economy, and nothing else matters," said Neil Oxman, a Democratic political strategist based in Philadelphia. “The criticism is real enough that you don’t ignore it, you’re not gonna let him slide. You try to freeze people’s minds on the fact that this guy denied it, called it a hoax. You just drill it in as hard as you can.”

Democratic groups have spent more than $6 million to air television and radio ads that began March 16 and reserving airtime through June 30.

Priorities USA has spent $5 million in the Keystone State. One of the group’s ads features sound bites of Trump calling the virus a hoax and assuring the cases will soon reach zero as a graph of the number of actual cases rises dramatically. Another juxtaposes clips of Trump with one of Democratic front-runner Joe Biden.

The ads are targeted at parts of Pennsylvania with more independent voters and where Trump did well in 2016: the Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Johnstown-Altoona media markets, with a small investment in Philadelphia.

Unite the Country, a PAC that supports Biden, debuted an ad showing Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama rising to meet crises, while asserting Trump has not met his. “Donald Trump didn’t create the coronavirus, but he is the one who called hoax, who eliminated the pandemic response team, and who let the virus spread unchecked across America,” the voice-over says. “Crisis comes to every president. This one failed.”

Unite the Country and Protect Our Care, a coalition pushing for the expansion of the Affordable Care Act, spent or committed $1 million in Pennsylvania.

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According to data from Advertising Analytics, there has been no spending for TV or radio by a Republican campaign or GOP-affiliated PAC in the last month in Pennsylvania.

America First Action, a pro-Trump PAC, announced Wednesday it will defend the president with a $10 million digital, TV, and mail ad buy painting Biden as “Sleepy Joe” starting in mid-April and running through May. More than $5 million will go toward ads in Pennsylvania, it said.

Attacking Biden may be smarter than trying to promote the president’s performance, Oxman said.

“They have a much higher burden of not saying something that is unbelievable about" Trump’s response to the crisis, Oxman said. "They can say it to their base — the 42% — but to the 55% who have some skepticism or voted against him, they have to be really careful not to oversell.”

Trump is also on news programs daily — sometimes for up to 40 minutes — giving virus response updates to as many as eight million or nine million viewers.

It’s not always good publicity, though. Trump’s news conferences have become fodder for attack ads against him. “If I were Trump I would just get up there and let [Anthony] Fauci talk," Oxman said, referring to the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has become the face of the U.S. government’s medical assessment of the virus. “He’s probably the most respected guy in America right now. And because he’s from New York, with a Brooklyn accent and he’s an Italian, Catholic guy who’s older, he’s believable to everybody.”

Trump’s campaign has also invested heavily in digital advertising on Facebook and Google. He’s benefited, some Democrats argued, from a blackout on political ads that reference the pandemic on Google. The company said last week that it would allow such ads moving forward.

For Democrats, it can be tricky toeing the line between criticizing Trump’s leadership and appearing to capitalize politically on a pandemic. Biden’s campaign hasn’t aired negative ads on Trump, and Biden has criticized the president’s response but avoided direct attacks. Asked on Meet the Press last week if he thought Trump had “blood on his hands,” Biden said: “I think that’s too far.”

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Yet Democrats have defended attacks on Trump’s response as critical to exposing misinformation coming out of the White House. Protect Our Care held a news conference call last week with health-care workers and legislators in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

“I just don’t think you can separate the politics of this from the advocacy part,” said executive director Brad Woodhouse. “This president responds to politics. We know he’s treating Florida different than he’s treating a lot of other states because he considers it a presidential battleground important to his reelection.”

Woodhouse accused Trump of downplaying the crisis when it was politically beneficial and changing tone when he realized the severity of the crisis and the potential fallout.

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat on the call, said being in a crisis is no excuse to stop raising questions, especially about medical workers in dire need of equipment or states waiting for help with virus testing.

“I don’t give a damn who gets the credit, but, my God, the idea that we’re supposed to just be completely muted and not criticize policy? Give me a break," Casey said. "We need the policy to be as near to perfect as possible. We can’t sugarcoat the challenges or the failures.”