Pro-Biden group launches two-year ad campaign to promote White House agenda

A pro-Biden super PAC Wednesday rolled out a two-year ad campaign to promote the administration’s agenda, marking the opening salvo of a public relations blitz to sell the White House’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. 

Priorities USA, which backed Biden during the 2020 elections, said in a statement the effort would be a “multimillion dollar campaign” and will start out with two clips touting the COVID-19 legislation. 

“President Biden and Democrats in Congress are delivering on their promises to the American people to tackle Covid-19, rebuild our economy, and address the ongoing crises facing our country,” said Priorities USA Chair Guy Cecil. “Priorities USA is committed to reaching the millions of Biden-Harris voters who turned out or voted for a Democrat for the first time in 2020 with a strategic, bold campaign focused on 2022 battleground states.” 

The announcement comes just hours after the House passed Biden’s sweeping coronavirus relief package. The first wave of digital ads will target the key swing states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which will host competitive Senate races next year.

Polling has shown the majority of Americans support the relief legislation, and the ads focus on some of the most popular provisions of the legislation, including $1,400 stimulus checks to some Americans and funding for vaccine distribution and small businesses.

“Tax cuts for billionaires? Republicans vote yes. Relief for the middle class? They vote no. But thanks to President Biden and Democrats, help is one the way. Stimulus checks, vaccine funding, help for small businesses: leadership this moment demands,” a narrator says in one ad.

“President Biden and Democrats are getting right to work, passing the American Rescue Plan to give our economy the jumpstart it needs,” a narrator says in another. “Now $1,400 stimulus checks are on the way and funding to speed up vaccine distribution, providing the leadership this moment demands.”

The prolonged ad blitz is part of Democrats’ strategy to promote the relief package all the way until the midterm elections next year. Priorities USA said its ads will focus on “new Democratic voters who turned out in 2020, persuadable voters who voted for Biden after supporting Trump or Republicans in the past, and voters who are susceptible to misinformation on social media.”

Democrats are already wary of repeating the mistakes of the public relations campaign around the 2009 stimulus package, which party leaders now say was not robust enough ahead of their 2010 “shellacking.” Democrats suffered over 60 House losses that year which cost them the majority in the lower chamber.

Keeping the pressure on Republicans will be more important for the party than ever heading into 2022 given that the GOP needs only to flip five seats in the House and one seat in the Senate to win back both chambers of Congress. 

“We didn’t adequately explain what we had done,” Biden told House Democrats last week regarding the 2009 stimulus package. “Barack was so modest, he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap.’ I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He said, ‘We don’t have time. I’m not going to take a victory lap.’ And we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”