Pro-Trump super PAC ditches anti-Clinton approach
As the presidential contest enters its final stretch, a pro-Donald Trump super PAC is preparing a major tactical shift.
In a Tuesday evening conference call with donors, the Rebuilding America Now super PAC, one of the main groups backing the Republican nominee, will announce that it’s going to focus on airing positive TV commercials in support of Trump.
The announcement, which was confirmed by two sources familiar with the group’s plans, comes as something of a surprise. Typically, outside groups like Rebuilding America Now embrace the role of attack dog. To date, Rebuilding America Now has aired a handful of TV commercials – nearly all of which harshly criticize Hillary Clinton. The organization’s first spot, for example, used footage of Bill Clinton’s infamous denial of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
But on the Tuesday call, hosted by the group’s chief strategist, Alex Castellanos, Rebuilding America Now plans to lay out its strategic case for going positive.
In a memo being distributed to donors, the super PAC says that its decision is based on a recent test that was conducted in the Youngstown, Ohio media market. There, it aired a positive, 60-second commercial titled “America Soaring” which presents Trump as a figure who can revitalize the nation’s hard-hit manufacturing industry. “Factory workers have seen the jobs they love shipped thousands of miles away. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can turn things around,” the ad says.
Over the course of the test, the group says, Trump saw a marked increase in his Youngstown poll numbers, going from a lead of two percentage points in the market to a lead of 18 percentage points. During that same time period, the super PAC aired negative commercials in the Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati media markets but found only minor fluctuations in Trump’s numbers.
In the memo, Castellanos and two other strategists guiding the group, Wes Anderson and Jim McLaughlin, argue that airing positive TV ads is the best way to move Republican and independent voters who are still uncommitted to voting for Trump. The approach, they say, could also persuade some voters who are currently supporting Clinton and Libertarian Gary Johnson.
“Our conclusion, based on this data is that it is time to try something different than just continuing to hammer Hillary Clinton with negative TV ads,” they write. “We can’t burn down the same house twice: Both Clinton and Trump have unfavorable ratings we’ve never seen before. It’s difficult to drive them higher.”
The authors add in the memo: “If this campaign remains one in which we only match our negative ads against their negative ads, we will conduct WWI: Trench warfare where both sides struggle to move a few inches. At this moment, our test indicates that a positive campaign (who would have thought?) affords us an opportunity.”
“Underneath two candidates with very high negatives, voters are hungry for change,” they write, “A positive ad like ‘America Soaring,’ with an optimistic, aspirational message of transformative change, promising renewed American strength, prosperity and progress, seems to give voters a door out of an otherwise locked room and permission to vote for Donald Trump.”
During the call, Rebuilding America Now hopes to motivate donors by pointing to recent statewide polling it has conducted in Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. All three surveys, which were conducted between Aug. 29 and Sept. 1 and were based on samples of 800 likely voters, show the contest statistically tied.
Like other pro-Trump super PACs, Rebuilding America Now has struggled to raise money. To date it has aired around $13 million in commercials – a small fraction of what the main pro-Clinton super PAC, Priorities USA, has spent.