President Joe Biden could be facing a turnout problem in 2024. And an experimental stealth campaign during South Carolina’s Democratic primary highlights one way players in the Republican Party will be trying to exploit Biden’s weaknesses.
A conservative group funded by anonymous donors sent mailers to approximately 75,000 Democratic primary voters in South Carolina, a heavily Black electorate, ahead of the Feb. 3 primary there, criticizing Biden over his administration’s push to ban menthol cigarettes. Black smokers are more likely to use menthol cigarettes, according to research cited by the FDA, and the potential ban has divided civil rights groups.
Biden won the South Carolina primary overwhelmingly, with 96% support — but the bigger question is whether the mailer, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, pushed recipients to stay home instead of turning out. That kind of result, or pushing voters to consider a third-party option, could have a much bigger effect in the fall in a close swing state.
Building America’s Future sent mailers to approximately 75,000 Democratic primary voters in South Carolina.
Building America’s Future sent mailers to approximately 75,000 Democratic primary voters in South Carolina.Building America’s Future
A source familiar with the strategy driving the group, Building America’s Future, told NBC News that while it’s still analyzing how the mailers affected recipients’ votes in the South Carolina primary, the nonprofit is planning to reinvest in a similar strategy later this year.
The group is planning to spend more than $1 million on efforts aimed at pushing base Democratic voters away from Biden in the general election, primarily in battleground states. It plans to target predominantly Black voters in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin with a mix of television, digital, radio and direct mail. But the group may also target young voters, too, as it did during golf’s WM Phoenix Open this month by focusing on concerns about potential bans on nicotine pouches like Zyn.
Targeting base demographics for the other party and encouraging members to waver is nothing new, and it’s a major tactic of both parties: The nonprofit arm of Democrats’ main Senate super PAC financed ads hitting Republican candidates from the right in 2018, for example. In 2016, the Trump campaign used Hillary Clinton’s defense of a major crime bill in the 1990s, when she used the term “superpredators” to refer to some criminals, in a swing-state ad campaign seen as an attempt to soften Clinton’s support among her base.
