Once again, better late than never.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is funding a last-minute ad blitz on behalf of Joe Biden in Texas and Ohio, providing a boost to the former vice president as polls and a flutter of late campaign activity continue to show that the Lone Star State might be in play.
A Bloomberg spokesperson told The Texas Tribune on Tuesday morning that the former mayor of New York City and Democratic presidential candidate will use his super PAC, Independence USA, to fund $15 million worth of statewide ads in both Texas and Ohio.
The ads begin running Wednesday and will go through Election Day, or Nov. 3. In Texas, the ads will focus on “[President Donald] Trump’s mismanagement of COVID-19 crisis,” according to a Bloomberg spokesperson. The commercials will run in both English and Spanish.
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The Bloomberg spokesperson confirmed earlier reports from the New York Times that the former mayor asked his team to run a round of polls across multiple states and based its spending decisions on survey results. The team came away convinced that Texas and Ohio were prime pickup opportunities for Democrats, despite both going for Trump in 2016, and Bloomberg later gave “the go-ahead to invest additional money to support Joe Biden,” the spokesperson said.
Unlike the RRC race money, which came in late September, this really is a last-minute blitz. You may, quite reasonably, think that having this kind of money earlier would have been better, and as a matter of principle I agree. I think the intent here is specifically to go after the lower-propensity voters, the handful of undecideds, and the type of Trump voters who don’t actually like him but still think that on balance he’s better – or at least not as bad – as the alternatives. The first group can be targeted with a straightforward positive pro-Biden pro-Democrats GOTV message, while the latter group gets a bunch of anti-Trump messages blasted at them. The middle group will get some of each. Because these folks are likely to not have been as engaged in the election before now, targeting them a month ago would have been less effective. It’s the same theory and application that motivated that late spending on MJ Hegar, who will also likely benefit from the Bloomberg splurge, as she will need as many of the folks in that first group to support her as well. It makes sense, and if Bloomberg sees a sound data-based reason to do this, it’s pretty encouraging.