Former President Donald Trump, who has been the boogeyman of negative ads for years, has found himself in an unfamiliar spot. Democrats are shelling out millions of dollars in advertisements to praise their work with him or his policies.
The vulnerable Democrats in Congress are trying to embrace, if only to an extent, the GOP presidential nominee in a bid to flex their bipartisanship and woo undecided voters in the final days of the 2024 election.
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“If their Republican counterparts were smart, they’d be doing the same thing to be reaching out to Harris supporters and trying to explain their portrait positions on reproductive rights,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said.
Democrats in battleground Senate races, including Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Jon Tester (D-MT), Bob Casey (D-PA), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), as well as Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) for Michigan’s open seat, have deployed the tactic.
“Casey bucked Biden to protect fracking, and he sided with Trump to end NAFTA and put tariffs on China to stop them from cheating,” a recent Casey ad boasts.
One from Baldwin says she “got President Trump to sign her Made in America bill.”
An ad from Brown states he “wrote a bill that Donald Trump signed to crack down on drugs at the border.”
The political arm of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers union also released an ad this week, going a step further to tie Brown to Trump’s running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH).
“Sen. Brown puts party politics aside and fights for our workers and our safety so Ohio doesn’t ever get railroaded again,” the ad states as it shows side-by-side pictures of Brown and Vance.
A Slotkin ad touted that she “wrote a law signed by President Trump forcing drug companies to show their actual prices.”
In the Senate’s most competitive race that could determine majority control, Tester’s ads in Montana have sought to appeal to Trump voters but without his name and imagery. Tester has featured “lifelong Republicans” and boasted how he “worked with Republicans, fighting to shut down the border, target fentanyl traffickers, and add hundreds of new Border Patrol agents.”
The trend of cozying up to Trump or some of his policies on the airwaves also extends to Nebraska independent Senate nominee Dan Osborn, who is running a remarkably competitive challenge to Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) in a Trump-dominated state. There is no Democratic candidate, but he has been labeled by Republicans and Fischer as a Democrat in sheep’s clothing.
“I’m where President Trump is on corruption, China, the border. If Trump needs help building the wall, well, I’m pretty handy,” Osborn says in a recent ad as the former steamfitter and ex-labor leader wields a blowtorch. “Deb and the career politicians, they’ve tried to stop Trump just like they’re trying to stop me.”
New ad from indy Dan Osborn in #NESen against GOP’s Deb Fischer
“I’m where President Trump is on corruption, China, the border. If Trump needs help building the wall, I’m pretty handy. Deb & the career politicians, they’ve tried to stop Trump just like they’re trying to stop me” pic.twitter.com/NGYVsVAV22
— Ramsey Touchberry (@ramsberry1) October 25, 2024
Another ad features Trump voters for Osborn, one of which says, “Fisher stabbed Donald Trump in the back,” for saying in 2016 he should drop out — a position she later reversed. Another says Fischer “has more in common with Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump.”
“Osborne’s with Trump on China, the border, and draining the swamp,” an Osborn supporter says.
The campaign arm of Senate Republicans made the case that Senate Democrats’ ad rhetoric on Trump doesn’t match their records, noting that they twice voted to convict him of impeachment and accused them of having “railroaded his agenda at every turn and tried to keep him out of office permanently.”
“Now that they can see the writing on the wall, they’re trying to rewrite history,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Philip Letsou said in a statement. “These Democrats have no respect for their own voters, and that’s why they feel so comfortable flagrantly lying.”
Vice President Kamala Harris has also embraced some aspects of Trump’s policies. The most notable was his no-tax-on-tips proposal, a position that Harris adopted after Trump first floated it in the service industry-focused town of Las Vegas in battleground Nevada. Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), also up for reelection, signed on to similar GOP legislation from Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Steve Daines (R-MT).
Trump later posted on Truth Social that Harris “has no ideas, she can only steal from me.” The Trump campaign branded her with the moniker “Copy Cat Kamala.”
Trump and Vance have accused Harris of taking more pages from their playbook by proposing a similar child tax credit and for her stance on steel policy by opposing the sale of U.S. Steel, a domestic steel producer, to Japan’s Nippon Steel.
On the other side of the Capitol in the House, centrist Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) has also embraced Trump in ads.
In a TV spot prior to President Joe Biden’s exit from the race, Golden said he “worked with the Trump administration to build a treatment center in Maine for my fellow veterans” and was “working with Republicans to secure the border and standing with law enforcement against defunding the police.”
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The House Republicans’ campaign arm charged “MAGA Democrats” with running ads “better suited for an SNL skit than a serious congressional campaign.”
“In reality, they are all voting for San Francisco liberal Kamala Harris after covering up Biden’s severe mental decline for years,” National Republican Congressional Committee press secretary Will Reinert said in a statement.
Cami Mondeaux contributed to this report.