The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, on Monday announced the launch of six-figure ad buys in four battleground states to mobilize voters ahead of next month’s midterm elections.
Ads sponsored by the group will run on television stations and streaming platforms including Roku and Hulu throughout Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Georgia, where the outcome of close contests for Senate seats could determine which party holds the majority next year.
Governor’s races in Nevada and Wisconsin have been categorized as toss-ups by election forecasters. Recent polls show Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) holding the lead in his reelection bid over Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams, while Sen. Rafael Warnock (D-Ga.) is locked in a tight reelection battle against Republican Herschel Walker.
The HRC ad campaigns are aimed at engaging upwards of 750,000 voters who back progressive leaders but don’t habitually vote in midterm elections, the group said Monday in a news release announcing the ad buys.
“We are in unprecedented times, with threats to the lives and livelihoods of LGBTQ+ people growing by the day,” Jennifer Pike Bailey, HRC’s deputy director of government affairs, said Monday. “It’s why we must make every effort to set pro-equality candidates on a path to victory.”
The 30-second spots running in each state project identical messages, save for the candidates endorsed at the end of each ad.
The HRC campaign encourages voters to cast a ballot in November for Abrams and Warnock in Georgia; Mandela Barnes, a Democrat running for Senate, and Gov. Tony Evers (D) in Wisconsin; Cheri Beasley, a Democrat running for the Senate in North Carolina; and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) and Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) in Nevada.
“For extremist politicians, outlawing abortion even in cases of rape and incest is just the beginning,” the ads state, referring to laws proposed by Republican lawmakers this year after the Supreme Court voted in June to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“They’re planning to take away our rights and freedoms, roll back same-sex marriage, make it harder to vote,” the ads continue. “They threaten our progress, our future. Voting is how we fight back.”
Pike Bailey on Monday said the HRC is “outraged” after federal abortion protections were struck down by the Supreme Court over the summer. The ruling has also caused many LGBTQ people and their allies to worry that modern LGBTQ rights, which hinge on a number of landmark Supreme Court decisions, could be next on the chopping block.
In July, the House passed the Respect for Marriage Act, introduced after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested the court should revisit its ruling in cases including Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized marriage equality nationwide.
But the measure, which would enshrine the right of same-sex and interracial couples to marry in federal law, has yet to get a vote in the 50-50 Senate.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R), running against Barnes in Wisconsin, has said he will oppose the legislation, and Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), who is running against Beasley to represent North Carolina in the Senate, voted against the bill when it was brought up for a vote in the House.
Adam Laxalt, Cortez Masto’s Republican opponent, has not taken a position on the Respect for Marriage Act but has previously said that he believes marriage should be between one man and one woman. In 2014, while campaigning for attorney general of Nevada, Laxalt promised to defend the state’s then-ban on same-sex marriage.
The HRC is not the only LGBTQ organization that has sought to mobilize voters ahead of the midterms, and other groups have taken a similar approach.
The LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD earlier this month aired two ads highlighting what is at stake for the LGBTQ community in the elections for the House and Senate. The ads feature a gay married couple worried that their family’s rights could be taken away and a Texas family of four with a transgender child that pushes back against claims from the state’s governor and attorney general that gender-affirming care for transgender youth is akin to child abuse.
Ads part of a $250,000 campaign from groups including the National LGBTQ Task Force, Equality Texas and Equality Florida will soon air on Facebook, Instagram and other media platforms, Newsweek reported Monday.