Joe Biden’s campaign is dropping another multi-million dollar ad campaign this month and building out its infrastructure in battleground states in hopes of taking advantage of a period of the campaign with Donald Trump largely stuck off the trail.
The president’s team announced on Wednesday that it would be making an additional $14 million in ad spending for May. It will also be hiring more staff — bringing its total to 500 — and open its 200th office by the end of the month. The steady drumbeat of campaign activity will continue as well. Biden heads to Wisconsin this week, followed by stops in Atlanta for a commencement address at Morehouse College and in Detroit to headline the NAACP dinner next week.
All told, the announcements, coming six months out from Election Day, signal that the Biden team is still banking on a traditional campaign strategy of trying to reach voters through a physical footprint and television ads. It is a stark contrast to his opponent, former President Trump, who has spent much of the past few weeks in a New York City courthouse and has attempted to use his ongoing criminal hush money trial to keep his base ginned up.
On a call with reporters, Biden principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks compared the campaign’s efforts with Trump’s campaign, whose “battleground presence is as non-existent as his paid media effort,” he said.
“We’re showing up in the communities every day and attempting to earn every vote, and Donald Trump and his team are doing none of that,” Fulks said. “The general election is just starting to crystallize for voters across the country, and we’re taking advantage of the moment to meet them where they are.”
The Biden campaign’s moves come at a politically fraught moment for the president, who continues to face domestic fallout from the war in Gaza. And even as his campaign builds out its machinery, Biden still lags behind Trump in polling averages, both nationally and in battleground polls.
Of particular concern for Democrats, Biden faces a fractured base with key groups, like young voters and Black voters, voicing frustration. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll, released Monday, found a 12-point drop among Black voters who said they are “absolutely certain to vote” compared to June 2020.
“I think the campaign still has a long way to go in terms of energizing Black voters and turning them out to the polls,” said Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis. He added that he believes Biden can close that gap, but called for more urgency.
In its announcement, aides to the Biden campaign said it will spend at least $1 million of its $14 million ad campaign on Black and Latino media, as well as Asian-American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders. In a memo shared with reporters, Biden aides also cited 10 interviews Biden participated in with nationally syndicated African-American radio this year and his hour-long interview with Univision.
“President Biden is going to continue to dedicate interviews to these critical elements with a specific focus on these constituencies,” said Michael Tyler, Biden’s communications director.
National Democrats are hopeful that the money will help reengage constituencies that seem unenthused about the reelection or unconvinced — as of now — that Trump represents the threat Biden has portrayed him to be.
“The thing that keeps me up at night is the enthusiasm gap,” said Donna Brazile, a veteran Democratic strategist who led the Democratic National Committee in 2016. “You have one side that is fired up and ready to vote, and you have another side that is still making up their mind, saying ‘well, have I gotten everything that I wanted from Joe Biden? Did he really keep his promises?’”
Burying Trump in spending is central to Biden’s strategy, made possible through Biden’s significant cash advantage over the former president. Last month, Trump spent as much on his legal bills as he did on campaigning, while Biden’s campaign outspent Trump’s campaign nearly eight-to-one.
On ads alone, Biden spent $21.8 million in March, while Trump’s campaign spent $3.7 million. That such a disparity hasn’t more fully moved the needle in Biden’s direction is yet worrying some national Democrats. But as spending kicks into higher gear in swing states, “battleground polling will also continue to move in Biden’s direction,” said Bill Neidhardt, a Democratic consultant who has worked on multiple progressive campaigns.
“What we’re seeing in the polls is that we’re still measuring Biden as the incumbent, but voters are not yet putting it in the context of a Biden versus Trump choice,” Neidhardt added. “So once voters see that, see the shift from incumbent mode to a choice election, then the numbers will follow.”
The Trump campaign has also been slower to launch field operations in swing states, which is reflected in his campaign’s leaner payroll. Trump spent just $597,000 on staff, while Biden dropped $2.3 million on payroll in March, according to campaign filings.
And the Republican National Committee, usually charged with leading field operations, slashed its staff this spring after Trump clinched the party’s nomination. The RNC and the Trump campaign, which have previously declined to provide details on its staffing operation, told POLITICO last month that the campaign has both paid and volunteer field workers in each battleground state and “are expanding daily.”
“Democrats want to talk about process because they don’t want to talk about Broken Braindead Biden and his record of absolute failure. What you won’t hear them talk about is the Biden Border Crises, Bidenflation, the out-of-control cost of living, Biden’s college campus chaos, and his weakness that has caused chaos abroad,” Trump campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez said in a statement. “The Trump campaign is raising the money, deploying the necessary assets to win.”
That’s left some Republicans concerned. While “the RNC has traditionally been phenomenal at get-out-the-vote operations,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican consultant who served as the RNC’s political director, “it remains to be seen what kind of infrastructure is still there.”
In advertising, the Biden’s team continues to lean into the issues that favor Democrats in polling, like health care, where the party enjoys an advantage over Republicans.
They launched a health care-focused ad on Wednesday, attacking Trump for threatening to “terminate” the Affordable Care Act and touting his own efforts to “[lower] health care costs for millions.”
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