Lincoln Project launches $1M offensive against Trump in Texas

The Lincoln Project on Tuesday launched a $1 million campaign against President Trump in Texas as Election Day looms.

The Republican anti-Trump group is targeting Hispanic and female voters in the Lone Star State, where polls show a competitive race between the president and Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Mike Madrid, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, said Trump has “dramatically accelerated” Texas’s move to becoming a swing state. 

“The polling data is undeniable and has been consistent for months — Republican voters are leaving Trump and Democrats are historically energized to turn him out of office,” he said in a statement. “We see an opportunity in Texas and we are going to take advantage of it.”

The campaign will focus on “Trump’s encouragement of violence, extremism, and white supremacist organizations” in addition to his administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and Trump’s own COVID-19 infection.

The Lincoln Project will run previously released ads as well as ads in Spanish to target the Hispanic community and ads specifically tailored for Texas voters. The ads will also aim to appeal to 642,000 suburban and rural Republican women. 

These digital ads will run in suburban and rural counties, such as Lubbock and Denton counties, in addition to urban counties, such as Travis County. They are slated to run for a week but could be extended through November. 

Recent polls of the presidential race in Texas show a tight race, with The New York Times-Siena College poll released last month showing Trump leading Biden — 46 percent to 43 percent — among likely voters. The president’s lead in the poll fell within the poll’s margin of error.

Another poll released late last month, a Quinnipiac University survey, found the president holding a 5-point lead in Texas, also falling within the poll’s margin of error.