Democratic candidates and groups are hitting the airwaves in the final days of the midterm election cycle with campaign ads that hammer home a focus on issues considered more favorable to Republicans, such as inflation and crime.
Campaigns and outside spending groups have just over a week to make their closing arguments to voters before Election Day brings what is widely expected to be a wave of Republican victories.
While Democrats had spent months trying broadly to center the conversation around abortion, some of their more recent shots in the ad wars have featured a return to the kitchen table issues that voters have told pollsters they care about more.
DEMOCRATS’ PIVOT ON CRIME MAY BE TOO LATE TO SWAY VOTERS
In the Oregon governor’s race, Democrat Tina Kotek has focused some of her final ads on distancing herself from Democratic Gov. Kate Brown and rebutting charges of leniency toward homelessness from her GOP opponent, Christine Drazan.
Brown is the most unpopular governor in the country.
“Christine Drazan’s ads? They’re just not true,” a narrator intones at the opening of an ad supporting Kotek in mid-October. “Tina Kotek called for a homeless state of emergency nearly three years ago. Not Kate Brown. Not Christine Drazan.”
Kotek had until now focused much of her campaign on abortion.
“Because we’ve had amazing champions like Tina Kotek, Oregon has the strongest protections for reproductive rights in the country,” a Planned Parenthood official said in an abortion-focused spot from August.
Drazan has held a slight lead in recent polls.
In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul ran an ad that blasted her Republican opponent in the governor’s race, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), for his abortion stance.
But one of her more recent ads instead focuses on crime. After Zeldin spent months hitting Hochul for her criminal justice views, including her past embrace of cashless bail policies, polls in the deep-blue state have begun to tighten to uncomfortable levels.
“A safe walk home at night. A subway ride free of fear. A safer New York for every child. That’s what Kathy Hochul is working for as governor,” a voice tells viewers in the more recent ad.
The tone of some Democratic ads in House races has shifted as well. That’s come as Republican groups expand their spending outside of toss-up races and into districts that President Joe Biden carried comfortably just two years ago.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, the political action committee linked to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race for California’s 49th Congressional District in an effort to unseat Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA).
One of Levin’s first ads over the summer focused on spotlighting his support of Biden administration priorities, such as the infrastructure bill, lowering prescription drug prices, and expanding healthcare. He also cut ads on abortion and Jan. 6.
But Levin’s latest, and potentially final, campaign ad seeks to bolster his credibility on inflation, an area that has eclipsed virtually all others in the final stretch of the race.
“And yes, it is a big problem that I’ve been working to address,” Levin says as he stares into the camera flanked by the sandy mountains of his California district.
“We need real action to bring down inflation, not a bunch of bull,” he concludes the ad, gesturing back to the bulls grazing behind him.
Some Democratic PACs have changed up their messaging in specific races as well.
For example, House Majority PAC, the spending group linked to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), ran an ad in September against the Republican candidate in Illinois’s 13th Congressional District race, where Democrat Nikki Budzinski is facing Republican Regan Deering in a left-leaning, but still competitive, open House race.
“Regan Deering celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” a narrator warns at the opening of the September ad from the Democratic group. “Regan Deering: endorsed by extremists who want to ban abortion, no exceptions, not for rape or incest.”
The same group cut another ad for the Illinois race this week that instead focused on Deering’s opposition to raising the federal minimum wage and her association with Republicans who want to raise the Social Security retirement age — both arguments centered on economic, rather than social, concerns.
Five of the six ads the PAC dropped on Friday in competitive races centered on taxes and the economy, and only one related to abortion.
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Not every candidate is changing tactics in the face of flagging polls.
Last week, Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Wisconsin, cut an ad once again highlighting the Jan. 6 riots despite trailing in the polls behind a Republican candidate, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has excoriated him on crime.
