Last night, we wired the money for our campaign’s final set of TV ads. Our cable TV ads are locked in through Election Day, and the cutoff to buy more has passed. Phew.
Because of you, we’re able to keep these ads up and reaching millions of Ohioans with our closing message as they prepare to vote. Your support got us there. Thank you.
It’s Lexie here - I’m Sherrod’s Finance Director. I oversee this campaign’s budget and now I’m looking ahead to the next set of payments we’re on the hook for.
We’ve written to you a lot about our TV ads. If you live in Ohio, I’m sure you’ve seen them too (not to mention a whole lot of nonsense from the other side). But right now I want to tell you about a specific kind of paid advertising that really matters in a race like ours – digital streaming platforms.
At 5:00PM ET, we’re going to wire the $477K we need to keep our ads on streaming platforms like YouTube, Hulu, and Tubi. Earlier, Sherrod wrote to you that we needed to raise another $104K before our wire cut off to do it. Here’s what he said:
I didn’t get into public service because I love asking for money, trust me. But it’s a part of this job – and a pretty critical one for a campaign like ours.
Unlike my opponent, I’m not getting $700,000 checks from Big Pharma, or $50 million from the crypto crowd. I don’t want their money anyway. Everything we’ve built since I announced I was running has been from grassroots donations from people like you. I’m really proud of that. More than 1 million contributions in ActBlue, and the vast majority is from people chipping in what they can – in fact, our average gift this week is under $32. It’s why we can win, in spite of being outspent by the shady groups on the other side.
I want to underscore how important this strategy is. This specific type of ad reaches otherwise difficult-to-reach voters, like young people who don’t have cable, people living in rural counties or apartment complexes that are harder to reach in person, and folks who don’t tune in to the news.
If we only ran ads on TV, there are millions of voters who would never hear from our campaign. Ads like this are how we get our message out to them. They’re how we break through the barrage of attack ads that billionaires have thrown at us.
Digital ads allow us to reach certain geographic areas and demographic targets more closely. Here’s why that sort of precision really matters – we can filter live through early voting data to see who needs an extra nudge to show up to the polls – and then we can make sure they see one of our digital ads.
Since Sherrod wrote to you, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of grassroots support. Folks who could give stepped up — even the $1, $3, and $5 donations add up. The folks who couldn’t passed along the message to their friends. We’re just $23,000 away from fully funding our digital ads through Election Day. With one more push, we can get there.
This is what a true grassroots team looks like, and I’m so honored to play my part in it.
We’ll have a lot more to say in the days to come (which will simultaneously feel like a lifetime and a split second) but right now I’m really hoping you’ll help us fully fund this critical part of our voter outreach.
No one can know with certainty how election night will go. But we can know that we did all in our power to fight for what we believe in.
So my challenge to you is this: If you haven’t gotten involved yet, please let this be your sign. We need the help. If you’re one of the thousands of people who have already joined this team, thank you thank you thank you. Can you ask a friend or a neighbor to see if they can too? We’re building something special here, and it’ll take all of us to finish the job.
Thanks for reading.
Lexie Leventis, Finance Director