$100 Million Ad Blitz: Democrats Launch Campaign to Flip House Seats

A Super PAC working to elect Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives is planning to spend $100 million on an advertising campaign in swing states focusing on abortion rights.

In a memo to donors released this week, the House Majority PAC (HMP) outlined its Reproductive Freedom Accountability Fund, which will support advertising and voter mobilization in the “largest independent expenditure on behalf of House Democrats.”

The PAC is targeting Republicans in blue states who have backed legislation against abortion, calling their support “extremist votes” and vowing that those actions “will prove to be career killers.”

California, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington are named as target markets for mobilization campaigns, which will include mail, digital advertising, door-to-door canvassing, and text messaging.

HMP is seeking to oust California Reps. David Valadao, Mike Garcia, and Michelle Steel over their co-sponsorship of the Life at Conception Act, which HMP says threatens in vitro fertilization and fertility treatments.

The PAC also wants to target Reps. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Tom Kean Jr., Mike Lawler, Anthony D’Esposito, Marc Molinaro, and Nick LaLota, who the group says voted against reimbursing military service members for abortions.

Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion emerged as an issue with an outsized influence on election results. In the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans got clobbered amid backlash over the party’s push to have the U.S. Supreme Court de-federalize abortion and make it a state’s rights issue.

Months earlier, the Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization did just that but energized a significant portion of the country that wanted abortion to remain legal throughout the entire country.

Headed into the 2024 election, abortion remains a wedge issue that could be a major liability for the GOP if its candidates fail to deliver a winning message to an electorate still largely supportive of abortion rights nationwide.

Less than six months before Election Day, survey data from Pew Research Center shows that two-thirds (63 percent) say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, including 41 percent of Republicans, and 61 percent of men.

“If this is truly Republicans’ preferred plan of attack, House Democrats can win on this issue by even larger margins than 2022,” HMP said. “The GOP’s inability to see that the majority of Americans disagree with their attempts to rip away rights will be advantageous to Democrats.”