The Democratic Party is directing millions of extra dollars to its House candidates this fall by way of a legal loophole that has helped them bypass the typical limits on coordinated spending between parties and candidates — all while linking some vulnerable Republicans to Donald Trump.
Typically, Federal Election Commission regulations limit parties to just $48,100 of spending in direct coordination with most House candidates. But under a decade-old FEC precedent, candidates that word their TV ads a certain way — including references to generic “Democrats” and “Republicans” as well as specific candidates — can split the cost of those ads with their party, even if that means blowing past the normal coordinated spending caps.
To date, more than a dozen Democratic challengers are benefiting from such “hybrid” advertising, getting extra hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The technique has been a small but consistent part of Democratic strategy in recent years, but new legal guidance has also allowed Democrats to share costs on ads linking their opponents to Trump on policy.
“You have a historically unpopular Republican presidential nominee, which increases the appeal of doing this sort of thing,” said a Democratic operative. “If you can find a way now that you only have to pay 50 percent of an ad, and link your opponent to Trump, and that makes strategic sense in the district, that’s a no-brainer.”
The cost-sharing has turned into a critical tool for the DCCC, as it suddenly tries to compete in more districts and support little-known challengers made unexpectedly viable by Trump’s late slide.
The ads that qualify for cost-splitting do exactly what Democrats already want to: nationalize House races and try to saddle local candidates — from Iowa to Nevada — with the Republican Party’s general unpopularity. And the influx of funds from the DCCC directly into candidate advertising has helped the party grow the battleground map, even including districts where the candidates themselves are perilously low on cash.
In one dramatic case, the DCCC appears set to spend over 30 times the FEC limit on normal coordinated expenditures to help former Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider run TV ads against his better-funded opponent. The key is in the wording of the ads, which lump together GOP Rep. Bob “Dold and the Republicans.”
The DCCC and candidates around the country have split over $5.4 million on ad costs so far, according to a source tracking House ad spending, with millions more to come. The DCCC and Schneider have together booked more than $3.2 million of advertising together through Election Day. Other candidates continue to book hundreds of new hybrid ad reservations every week.
Increasingly, some of the ads are naming Trump directly instead of linking GOP incumbents to generic “Washington Republicans.” One in Northern Virginia charges GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock with having the same agenda as Trump on abortion and Planned Parenthood.
“The legal logic is that it’s half an issue ad paid for by the DCCC and half a candidate ad paid for by the candidate,” said a second Democratic consultant, who has been involved in the production of hybrid ads in 2016. “The language has to be very specifically about Trump policy,” the consultant continued, to avoid falling afoul of rules governing in-kind contributions, since Trump is a candidate on the ballot this year.
Hybrid ads do come with complications. The phrasing needs to be just right, focusing equally on local candidates and broader references, to qualify as hybrids. Sources described an intensive vetting process for the ads, which includes the DCCC’s research and legal departments.
And the wording can get clunky. Meeting the hybrid requirements is why, when President Barack Obama appeared in a Schneider TV ad this week, he awkwardly shoehorned Schneider’s party into his endorsement. “Vote for Brad Schneider and the Democrats,” Obama says in the ad.
Hybrid ads have typically only been deployed in districts that lean strongly toward one party, making links to “Democrats” or “Republicans” damaging to local candidates. But Trump’s massive unpopularity has made more districts fruitful ground for the advertising technique.
“We can only do it in certain districts,” said a third Democratic operative. “But it’s increasing numbers of districts as Trump’s numbers fall.”
The DCCC declined to comment on its strategy.
This type of ads has been a boon to some of Democrats’ latest-breaking House campaigns, many of which are low on cash. Democrat LuAnn Bennett, the beneficiary of the anti-Comstock ad in Virginia, had just $90,000 in her campaign account at the end of September, while Comstock had $1.9 million, according to campaign finance reports filed last weekend. But since that last week of September, Bennett and the DCCC have aired over $470,000 worth of TV ads together, with more likely coming.
Bennett is one of more than a half-dozen top Democratic House candidates who started the final six weeks of the campaign with less than $150,000 in their accounts, which wouldn’t cover even a week of heavy TV advertising in some places. Many of them started their campaigns late or weren’t initially considered marquee recruits, leaving them short on funds when the national political environment started to turn in Democrats’ direction.
The DCCC, however, just announced a record $21 million raised in September, with a hefty $45.5 million on hand at the end of that month. Democratic have long noted that money would be a limiting factor on just how far the party could stretch its House hopes this year. But the hybrid ads are helping the committee save some money while contesting an increasing number of House districts, many of which are in some of the country’s most expensive media markets.
Since the hybrid ads are coordinated directly with candidates, who are guaranteed the “lowest unit rate” on ads from TV stations, the DCCC isn’t paying premium outside-group rates to spend that money on TV. When the DCCC airs independent expenditure ads separately from the candidates in these districts, it will usually pay a higher rate than a candidate even to run an ad on the exact same program.
“It is one of our shields against the insane amounts of outside money coming into these districts,” said a fourth Democratic strategist.
Florida Democrat Stephanie Murphy only started her House campaign in June but has since benefitted from over $270,000 in ads partially funded by the DCCC in Orlando, some of which say that veteran GOP Rep. John Mica “and Donald Trump share the same harmful policies.”
Michigan’s Suzanna Shkreli, whose campaign kicked off in July and has recently generated enthusiasm among Democrats watching the House landscape for late opportunities, is another who appears to be leaning on the technique. In upstate New York, Democrat Colleen Deacon has tried to jolt her underdog campaign by linking GOP Rep. John Katko to Donald Trump’s foreign policy views.
And Doug Applegate, a Southern California Democrat and first-time candidate making a surprisingly strong run against GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the DCCC’s emphasis on hybrids. An ad-buyer estimated Applegate and the DCCC have together aired over $960,000 of TV ads in the last month — during which time Applegate filed a FEC report showing him with just $167,000 in his campaign account, compared to Issa’s $3 million-plus.
“Darrell Issa and the tea party Republicans tried to play politics with our lives,” a 9/11 first responder says in one of Applegate’s ads. Other spots paid for by Applegate and the DCCC reference Trump, including one charging that both Trump and Issa “gamed the system” to direct taxpayer money to themselves.
Democrats are making heavy use of hybrid ads now, but they have a bipartisan tradition. President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign used them heavily in conjunction with the Republican National Committee, and the FEC deadlocked on whether to continue allowing the practice.
“The reason this happens is that the coordinated limits are now increasingly irrelevant in campaigns, because the campaigns are so expensive,” said a Republican legal expert. “There is so much money spent now that the parties want to stretch the coordinated limits so that they’re somewhat relevant.”