Progressive super PAC prepares $800K ad buy hitting Trump on coronavirus

Progressive super PAC Pacronym is preparing to launch a wave of digital advertisements in key battleground states this week hammering President Trump’s response to the coronavirus.

The ad buys, costing about $800,000, are the latest installments in a $75 million effort by Pacronym and affiliated group Acronym to counter Trump’s early spending advantage in the 2020 presidential race.

The new ads, first shared with The Hill, are slated to run for the next week and a half and will target persuadable voters in five battleground states: Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The campaign will feature a mix of video ads and graphics on multiple platforms, including Facebook, Roku, YouTube, Pandora and NBCU, as well as a handful of news sites owned by Gannett and McClatchy.

The focus of the ad campaign is “laying out the facts” of the president’s response to the pandemic and “reminding voters of the many ways that Trump made it worse,” said Acronym chief marketing officer Shannon Kowalczyk.

“While Americans are sheltering in place in their homes and the virus continues to spread, Trump has either bragged about his ratings or tried to bait the media into talking about something else,” Kowalczyk said.

One of the new ads features video clips of Trump boasting about TV ratings for the daily White House coronavirus task force press briefings, with news clips describing the mounting death toll from the disease.

Another spot includes a clip of Trump predicting “the economy is going to do very well” and that his administration has the situation “totally under control.” Meanwhile, news clips and interviews highlight the dire economic situation faced by millions of Americans.

“I just don’t feel like anybody is helping us,” one woman says in the ad.

Pacronym and Acronym aren’t the only outside groups spending massive amounts on coronavirus-focused ads. Priorities USA, the largest Democratic super PAC, launched a $6 million ad blitz last month attacking Trump over his handling of the deadly outbreak.

Meanwhile, Trump has sought to counter the Democratic attacks. His campaign spent nearly $28,000 on Facebook advertisements focused on the disease between March 14 and April 18, according to the Democratic digital firm Bully Pulpit Interactive.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has spent little more than $600 on coronavirus-related ads on the platform during the same time frame.