Democrats Are Blanketing Small Newspapers With Ads in the Election’s Last Sprint

Democrats are turning to a few dozen small newspapers to get their message out in the election’s final days.

Twenty-five newspapers in the seven top battleground states — North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia — will feature full-page ads from the Democratic National Committee on Wednesday, the committee told NOTUS. Each page will include a message that criticizes Donald Trump as “unhinged,” “unstable” and “unchecked.”

The DNC chose to place the ads in many of the states’ small-to-midsize newspapers in suburban and exurban areas, including the Erie Times-News in Pennsylvania, the La Crosse Tribune in Wisconsin and the Macon Telegraph in Georgia.

In a release, Democrats said the ads are meant to target the kind of voters who could swing what is widely expected to be a close election.

“In the final week of the election, Democrats are not leaving any stone unturned, reminding voters in key battleground states that their vote means the difference between chaos and revenge with Donald Trump, or a New Way Forward with Vice President Harris,” DNC Chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement.

Newspapers are rarely the recipient of campaign advertisements. But the ads this week are the latest example of the DNC finding new ways to take advantage of the fundraising surge Democrats have benefitted from since Kamala Harris became their de facto presidential nominee this summer. The party has also funded ads to run at gas stations and in local nail salons and malls.

Democrats raised $1.5 billion in the third fundraising quarter through the online platform ActBlue, which the service said was an all-time fundraising record. Much of that money has helped fund TV and digital ads, which have blanketed swing states over the last several months.

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Alex Roarty is a reporter at NOTUS.