PAC aims for banner year by taking anti-Trump message to the skies
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
At first glance this weekend, it’ll look like an enormous Trump/Pence 2016 campaign sign is flying across the skies above Pittsburgh. But look a little closer, and it will be clear that the message is not from a friend of the Donald’s.
On Saturday and Sunday, Pittsburghers will notice a plane carrying a 100-by-30foot banner calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. According to its owner, it will be visible from space — the “mother of all banners,” indeed — and will attempt to influence voters to choose Democrats in the November election.
The banner is a product of Mad Dog PAC, an Annapolis, Md.-based committee that advocates for the removal of Republicans from Congress and the president from the White House. The PAC’s founder, Claude Taylor, an alum of the Bill Clinton administration, said the banner is meant to galvanize voters who believe Mr. Trump is “corrosive” to the American political process and to the presidency itself.
“[The banner is] obviously for Democrats and for Republicans of conscience — Republicans who realize that their party has fallen into the grips of a common criminal and a charlatan whose strings are being pulled by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” Mr. Taylor said in an interview Thursday.
Funded by mostly smalldollar donations, the PAC has installed more than 50 billboards across the country calling for impeachment and other messages, including putting an end to the National Rifle Association’s influence over the political system.
One of the committee’s billboards, about 25 miles east of Pittsburgh in Delmont, exclaims, “Ban assault weapons.”
Another, in Texas near the largest immigrant processing center in the country, asks “What if she was your child?” with the picture of a little girl crying.
The PAC spent more than $220,000 on billboard advertising alone from Jan. 1 to March 31, according to the most recent report it filed with the Federal Elections Commission. About $2,500 of that went toward a billboard opposing Republican Rick Saccone in his failed special election bid against Democrat Conor Lamb for Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District in March.
More than 80 percent of the PAC’s contributions come from amounts less than $200, according to the FEC. It had about $56,000 on hand as of the beginning of April.
Mr. Taylor, who founded Mad Dog in December, worked on Mr. Clinton’s two presidential campaigns in the 1990s and served in a lowlevel role in his administration.
Since then, he has run a photography gallery in Washington, D.C., while supporting Democratic candidates with donations and consulting.
“I really got re-energized when the Trump train started heading toward us all,” Mr. Taylor said.
The banner project started about six weeks ago and has been flown above Ohio, the Jersey shore, Detroit and Chicago. After Pittsburgh, it will head back to New Jersey.
“We will put that message in front of as many voters we possibly can going forward,” Mr. Taylor said, adding that after November’s midterms, he will refocus his efforts on messaging near Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.
In the Strip District on Saturday, Mr. Taylor will be handing out 50 “Traitor Tot” balloons. They’re 3 feet by 2 feet and depict the president in a diaper. defendants charged here