Bloomberg ads to start hitting the airwaves
Commercials target Trump’s response to coronavirus
The first advertising from Mike Bloomberg’s $100 million attempt to help Joe Biden win Florida will show up on TV screens throughout the state today.
The Priorities USA Action super PAC spending $5.4 million for a week of advertising time in each of the state’s10 television markets.
The money is coming from Bloomberg.
“Responsibility” will run statewide. It brings to Florida an updated version of an earlier ad that Priorities
USA has run in other battleground states. It shows a graph with the increasing number of COVID -19 deaths and words from President Donald Trump — calling it a “hoax,” promising “low numbers,” declaring it “totally under control,” and concluding with “No, I don’t take responsibility at all.”
Stations in the Panhandle will get “America First,” which shows what Priorities and the Bloomberg organization said is the poor job the U.S. has done at mitigating the spread of the virus compared to other countries.
Priorities USA, in a statement about the campaigns, said the two ads “proved to be the most effective in driving up support for Biden and away from Trump.”
Averages of polls this month show Biden 2 percentage points ahead of Trump, and neither at 50% of the vote.
With 29 electoral votes — more than a tenth of the 270 needed to win the presidency — Florida is the biggest battleground state that could go either way in the presidential election.
With 10 television markets and a large population, it’s also expensive to run an effective campaign in the state.
The Florida spending from Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York, which he announced on Sunday, includes TV, radio and digital advertising. It will also support efforts to turn out voters, especially vote by mail and emphasize reaching Black and Hispanic voters.
He doesn’t have a lot of time to effectively spend the $100 million. Though Election Day isn’t until Nov. 3, Florida elections supervisors will begin sending out millions of vote-by-mail ballots next week.
Trump mocked Bloomberg’s announcement on Twitter, pointing to his unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“I thought Mini Mike was through with Democrat politics after spending almost 2 Billion Dollars, and then giving the worst and most inept Debate Per
formance in the history of Presidential Politics. Pocahontas ended his political career on first question, OVER! Save NYC instead,” Trump wrote.