Drivers in Pennsylvania may start seeing more billboards featuring everyday people, such as a gray-haired man in a red shirt named “Mike” and a elementary message: “I am a former Trump voter. I am a patriot. I am voting for Harris.”
The billboards were financed by a group called Republican Voters Against Trump, a project of Republican Accountability PAC. The group hopes that grassroots votes will convince conservatives and independents to support Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, in November.
On Tuesday, the group announced a modern $11.5 million campaign that will feature voters like Mike on billboards, online, television and radio ads in Pennsylvania and other key battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.
However, the bulk of the spending, $4.5 million, will go to Pennsylvania, which could prove to be a deciding state in the 2024 elections.
John Conway, the chief strategy officer for the District of Columbia-based Republican Voters Against Trump, is running the campaign (he claims no relation to Trump’s arguably most eminent opponent, George Conway).
“Our campaign is built on the idea that we need to put in place a framework to get voters who have historically identified as Republicans to vote against their party’s candidate,” Conway said. “The ads themselves are coming from the same people we’re targeting with these campaigns: center-right former Trump voters who don’t want to vote for him again.”
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Conway says the group has collected testimonies from about 300 voters who previously voted for former President Donald Trump but no longer support him. They are at the heart of the modern ads.
While Conway and other leaders of the project identify as Republicans — Conway endorsed former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the 2024 primary — some of Republican Accountability PAC’s biggest donors are liberals, including LinkedIn co-founder and political mega-donor Reid Hoffman and investor and philanthropist John Pritzker.
“Everyone understands that putting country first is more important than their party ideology or partisanship,” Conway said. “So we’re working with people on the other side of the fence to build a pro-democracy coalition in this country.”
Republican Voters Against Trump was founded in 2020 to persuade conservatives to vote against Trump because of his anti-democratic tendencies. The group bought ads during the last presidential election, as well as the last midterm elections.
In 2022, for example, it ran ads opposing far-right state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin) when he was the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania. Mastriano was a promoter of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen and apparently even spent money transporting fans to Washington before January 6, 2020
Ahead of the current election, the group conducted focus groups and controlled trials to find out what messages resonated most with center-right voters, who may agree more with Republicans than Democrats on many issues but are wary of another Trump term.
For now, Republican Voters Against Trump plans to remain vigorous throughout the rest of the election cycle. Conway estimates the group will spend a combined $50 million during the 2024 campaign.
“We want to create a surround sound experience for these undecided voters,” Conway said. “Whenever they turn on their TVs, listen to the radio or drive around in their cars, we want them to see our billboards, we want them to hear our ads, we want them to see our commercials.”
According to Axios reportPennsylvania is expected to be the biggest political spending target for the Trump and Harris campaigns and the outside spending groups that support them this cycle. Both candidates would likely have a tough time winning statewide without it.
