WASHINGTON _ A Democratic super PAC that had once taken a hands-on approach to identifying rural voters angry with President Donald Trump is changing up its approach in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
Now, it wants those critical battleground state voters to come to them by giving them a chance to film their own stories about why they are fed up with the president.
The effort from the Democratic group American Bridge pairs a web portal that allows voters to upload videotaped testimonials detailing their opposition to Trump with an email and text message campaign urging residents of the key swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to access the site.
It's a program American Bridge will launch in lieu of an earlier effort from the group to go door-to-door in search of voters disgruntled with the president.
"This is always something we had envisioned as part of our project," said Bradley Beychok, president of American Bridge. "This COVID-19 has just made it a lot more important and a priority. It feels like you need to deploy more technology and more solutions to people at a time when people have more anxiety and fear."
The effort from American Bridge is another indication of how the coronavirus outbreak, which has made neighborhood canvassing operations an impossibility for the foreseeable future, is forcing political campaigns and organizations to adapt. In American Bridge's case, the pandemic has also made it impossible to send a video production team to record voters' anti-Trump messages, the type it included in earlier ads targeting the president's reelection campaign.
Beychok, who said the program would seek out mostly white working-class voters who are former Trump supporters, front-line health care responders and small-business owners, added that many people have become so used to seeing online, first-person videos that he hoped they could be used in future paid media advertising campaigns.
The messages used in the forthcoming ad campaign _ American Bridge has already spent about $13 million in paid media in the three battleground states _ will emphasize the president's response to the pandemic and a policy agenda Democrats say left the country more vulnerable to it.
"Our message right now is focused on health care, the economic, and COVID-19, and those three things are intertwined together," Beychok said. "COVID brought a bridge between health care and the economy in a way people hadn't seen before."
Since last year, American Bridge has built a paid media campaign targeting battleground state voters in primarily rural areas, hoping that even small inroads in those communities could help Democrats win back the White House in 2020.
