The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris disclosed its intentions to launch a last-ditch expenditure drive following Labor Day. The campaign declared on Saturday that it will set aside $370 million for advertising between September and November.
The Harris campaign decided to reserve television commercials in advance in order to guarantee the best ad spaces on the most watched shows, such as major sports, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, Abbott Elementary, and the Golden Bachelorette, as well as CBS’s Survivor.
The campaign executives believe that Fox News has a “more moderate audience” throughout the day, so they are also targeting daytime viewers. Officials from the Harris team claimed it was a calculated strategy to win over Republicans who supported former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley during the GOP primary.
Both President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Harris have made a concerted effort to court Republicans who backed Haley over former President Donald Trump during the primary, and they have chastised the GOP nominee for not going above and beyond to win over Haley supporters.
$170 million will go toward television advertisements, but Harris’s team is setting up an additional $200 million for digital advertising since she has pushed her campaign onto the internet to reach younger people. In contrast, television advertisements accounted for roughly 80% of the first reservations for the 2020 Biden campaign.
Quentin Fulks, Harris’s senior deputy campaign manager, told the New York Times, “We’re not only trapped in the periods of old, where 80 percent of the spending needs to be on television.” In 2024, this will be a modern campaign.
Harris will continue to run advertisements in swing states, including Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin, in addition to launching more national campaigns. She’ll also spend over twice as much as her $150 million summertime advertising campaign.
After Labor Day, the Trump team has only earmarked $44 million in television advertising in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Rob Flaherty, Harris’s deputy campaign manager, stated that “beating [Trump] to the punch” is “definitely a benefit.”
The Washington Examiner contacted the Democratic National Committee and the Harris campaign to get a reaction.
