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A climate group with ties to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is running a $1 million TV ad campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin aimed at highlighting President Biden’s record on renewable energy.
The ad, which features two Democratic governors, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tony Evers of Wisconsin, is one of the most significant third-party ads aired so far in battleground states this presidential election cycle.
The group funding them, Evergreen Collaborative, was founded by staffers from Inslee’s 2020 presidential campaign. Over the past three years, the group has spent about $2.5 million on issue ads in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin promoting the Beat Inflation Act, Michigan’s clean energy bill and federal pollution standards.
The new ads began airing Tuesday and will run for three weeks in the Milwaukee and Flint and Grand Rapids, Michigan, television markets.
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In Evergreen’s Michigan ad, Whitmer highlights Biden’s record and her own record on investing in renewable energy in the state.
“Let’s Make it in Michigan,” Whitmer said, standing in what she described as a job training center. “And that’s what we do every day.”
“Batteries that once came from China are now being made all over our state,” Whitmer said, as footage of Biden at the Detroit Auto Show played, appealing to voters attracted to the anti-China policies of Biden’s Republican rival, former President Donald J. Trump.
Evers doesn’t appear until the end of the Wisconsin ad, which focuses on a solar project it says will power 750,000 homes in the state.
“Governor Evers is working with the Biden Administration to do even more,” the ad’s narrator says, as photos of Evers and Biden touring a Milwaukee factory last summer play. “Home values will rise and utility bills will fall.”
The ad ends with footage of Evers’ annual State of the State address: “My fellow Wisconsinites, this is the future we’ve been building together for years,” he says.
What the ad is trying to do
The ads are an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Whitmer and Evers, who polls show are far more popular than Biden in their respective states.
Though Evergreen is technically an issue advocacy group, which means it’s prohibited from explicitly urging people to vote for Biden, the message here isn’t subtle: A Michigan ad featuring Whitmer in a leather jacket speaking from a factory floor could be a Biden campaign ad in itself, essentially saying, “If you like what I do, support Biden for president.”
Neither ad mentions Biden’s $891 billion Inflation Control Act of 2022, which he signed into law. Relatively few Americans are aware of the law, and top Democratic strategists have called for campaigners to refrain from mentioning it by name.
Instead, in these ads, Evergreen is trying to remind voters that the things they love — car battery manufacturing in Michigan and solar power in Wisconsin — are coming from a Biden administration. With less than six months to go until the presidential election, Biden has been unable to get that message across to voters, leaving it to outside advocacy groups and Democratic governors to do that.
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