The TV Ad That May Have Moved the Needle Toward Trump in Campaign’s Waning Days
Controversial transgender-focused commercials resonated with key voter groups, and the Harris campaign failed to respond.
The power of effective advertising may have been enough to push the needle at the last minute for President Trump.
An ad created by the Trump campaign after his September debate with Vice President Harris attacked the Democratic candidate’s stance on transgender policies — specifically, her previous support for funding surgeries for transgender inmates in prison, according to a report from the New York Times.
“Every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access,” she said in a clip from a 2019 used in the ad, which ended with a direct and pointed tagline: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
The Times reports that even Trump campaign staffers were stunned by the commercial’s bluntness.
Funding was poured into distribution efforts for the spot, with it airing over the final two months of the campaign during football games. The ad raised the ire of popular radio show host Charlamagne Tha God, who complained about it during his show “The Breakfast Club.”
Charlamagne’s response provided even more fodder for the Trump campaign, which used clips of his complaints in a second 30-second ad that ranked as one of the most effective spots for Trump.
The “they/them” ads were a direct summation of Trump’s argument against Ms. Harris — that she was “dangerously liberal.” The ads tested well, not only with Black and Latino men but also moderate white women in the suburbs who were concerned about athletes who transitioned participating in girls’ sports, according to Trump campaign officials.
The Harris campaign and Democrats never really responded to the venomous ads. The Times reports that President Clinton told the campaign they needed to respond; they assured him then that the Trump ads were not having any negative effect.
However, Future Forward, the leading super PAC for Ms. Harris found in their own analysis that the race had shifted 2.7 percentage points in Trump’s favor after viewers watched it.
“We have to answer it and say we won’t do it,” Mr. Clinton told an associate after seeing the ad. Bowing to transgender activists in the Democratic camp, the Harris campaign never did.
