Democrats will try to shine a spotlight on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s record on workers’ rights by calling him a “scab” as the Labour Day holiday signals the unofficial start of the autumn campaign season.
The Democratic National Committee is set to display 19 digital billboards in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania on Monday as its first paid media buy to kick the season off, a Democratic adviser told HuffPost exclusively.
The billboards, in English and Spanish, will show an unflattering picture of Trump’s face next to the caption “Trump’s an anti-union scab!” and will appear in a mix of high-traffic and other locations in those swing states.
“He has proven over and over again that he does not care about working Americans, and if he regains the Oval Office, he will answer only to his big-dollar friends and donors,” said DNC spokesperson Maddy Mundy.
The buy is not big by presidential campaign standards, but it shows Democrats’ intent to remind voters of Trump’s anti-union record, according to Brad Woodhouse, a senior adviser to the DNC.
“We were really kind of channeling Shawn Fain with that choice,” Woodhouse joked, referring to Fain, who heads the United Auto Workers, wearing a T-shirt that called Trump a “scab” during his speech at the party’s national convention recently. A scab, in union parlance, is someone who doesn’t respect a picket line and instead walks through it.
“And Labour Day’s a good opportunity to lift that up,” Woodhouse said.
Woodhouse estimated the whole ad buy will only be about $25,000 to $30,000.
Trump has come in for criticism from union leaders for a variety of reasons. In addition to weakening the power of unions during his presidency, he praised billionaire Elon Musk for firing striking workers, crossed a picket line in 2004 and held an event that purported to be in support of striking UAW workers but where almost no one reporters interviewed was an actual union member.
Woodhouse called the billboard buys a “message bracketing opportunity,” meaning the signs are meant to convey a rival message to the one pushed by Trump’s campaign and might garner media interest for separate stories as well.
To determine where to place the billboards, Democrats considered the likelihood of a campaign event being held nearby, the potential route of a Trump motorcade that could draw people to where they might see the billboards, and whether the spots see high traffic.
“What we’ve learned since the advent of social media and all of the fragmentation of the media and channels is that you just have to be everywhere. And this is kind of a small part of being everywhere,” Woodhouse said.
Digital billboards can be turned around much more quickly than television or internet campaign ads. For example, the DNC was able to put a message about IVF treatments on billboards near a Trump event on Friday after he said on Thursday that he supported the government paying for the treatments directly or requiring they be covered by insurance.
Woodhouse said the entire changeover, from art and message production to legal clearances, took only a few hours and was only possible because digital billboards are so flexible.
While billboards don’t cost as much or seem as sexy as TV and internet ads, Woodhouse said, they can be important.
“This is small. It moves the needle marginally. But, in a close race, the margins matter,” he said.