Citing concern over Sanders’ challenges in Florida, Democratic super PAC postpones ad blitz

An influential Democratic group on Friday is postponing a TV ad blitz targeting President Donald Trump in Florida over concerns Bernie Sanders would struggle to win the state in a general election.

And if the Vermont senator becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, it might not run TV ads in Florida at all — though officials with the group emphasize that no final decision has been made and that they still think Sanders can defeat Trump in other battleground states.

Priorities USA, a super PAC that says it will spend $150 million on anti-Trump ads this year, had planned to start running TV ads in Florida on March 31st. But Sanders’ rise to the top of the Democratic primary — and fears over his unpopularity in the state — persuaded the group to push back the ad campaign until at least May 5th.

“With the primary still in flux, we want to wait to see who the nominee is before we determine our TV strategy in Florida,” said Josh Schwerin, senior strategist with Priorities USA. “Current data suggests that while both Sanders and Biden have paths to 270 electoral votes, Florida would be more challenging for Sanders.”

The now-delayed five weeks of TV ads would have cost $3.7 million. Officials with Priorities said last month that they had reserved $12.5 million worth of TV ads to run in Florida.

The postponement is another indication of the anxiety many Democrats feel about Sanders’ electoral chances in Florida, where his avowed support of democratic socialism might alienate the state’s important bloc of Cuban-American voters in a state Trump narrowly carried in 2016.

Many of South Florida’s lawmakers have been openly disdainful of Sanders’ candidacy, and his recent praise of Cuba’s literacy program provoked a fresh round of criticism from Democrats in the region.

Priorities will continue to run digital ads in Florida, which have cost them about $3.2 million since last summer. The group will also begin running TV ads in another presidential battleground state, Michigan, as scheduled at the end of March and is already on air in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

But if Sanders does win the Democratic nomination, the group signaled it might conclude he has a better chance to win the general election by winning presidential battlegrounds other than Florida.

“If Sanders emerges as the nominee, we will conduct more research to determine whether continuing a large-scale investment in Florida is an efficient use of our resources or if we should shift our resources to other states,” Schwerin said.

Officials with the super PAC emphasized that scaling back its TV ads in the state isn’t due to financial constraints, saying it has tens of millions of dollars on hand.

Debates over Sanders’ electability against Trump have raged among Democrats since the senator’s popular vote victories in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada last month. Despite concerns among some moderates, Sanders polls about as well against the president as Joe Biden.

Priorities has remained neutral in the Democratic primary, with officials saying their only goal is to defeat Trump.

The group’s apprehension over Sanders’ chances in the Florida might eventually become moot. In an improbable turnaround, Biden has once again emerged as the frontrunner in the Democratic primary, thanks to victories in a slate of Super Tuesday states like Virginia, Massachusetts, and Texas.

And Biden’s delegate edge might grow even more after Florida’s primary on March 17th, where at least one poll shows him with a 50-point edge over Sanders.

This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 5:00 AM.