Updated at 2 p.m. Tuesday with fresh figures showing the Biden ad buy at $6.3 million, up from initial buy of $5.8 million.
WASHINGTON — With President Donald Trump hamstrung by a bout with COVID-19, Joe Biden is eyeing opportunity in Texas and doing something no Democratic nominee has done in decades: making a serious push in the state.
The former vice president hasn’t scheduled a visit so far. But he has quietly reserved $6.3 million for an advertising blitz through the final four weeks, starting Tuesday.
Viewers in Dallas-Fort Worth especially will have trouble avoiding his pitch, which also targets voters in the Houston, San Antonio and Austin markets.
“It’s a hell of a lot more than anybody else ever spent, that’s for sure,” Texas Democratic Party chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said. “This is a very good sign.”
Biden’s ad buy shows up in data collected by Advertising Analytics, which tracks campaign spending. He could still back out, making this a rather elaborate feint, but Texas Democrats believe it’s just the start. And the state party is simultaneously investing several million for ads aimed at Black and Latino voters — a coordinated assault on a state that Republicans long counted on as unassailable.
Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris have yet to put Texas on their itineraries, though Texas activists remain hopeful as polls continue to show Trump mired in a tie with Biden, or barely ahead, in a state he won by 9 points four years ago.
Until Monday, Biden had only deployed Texas allies in Texas. Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, visited San Antonio and Edinburg, ending a decades-long streak of Texas being ignored by the national ticket.
Emhoff will be in Dallas on Tuesday, campaigning at Friendship West Baptist Church.
“They’re sticking their toe in the water to see how warm it is and I think that they’re feeling good about the temperature,” said Hinojosa, after joining Emhoff at a get-out-the-vote event in Edinburg.
The Trump camp scoffed.
“For all the talk of turning Texas blue, the Biden campaign waited until 29 days out from Election Day to start campaigning in state,” spokesperson Samantha Cotton said.
The Trump campaign has kept up a steady volley of digital ads in Texas — a cost-effective way to target voters: $5.9 million since March statewide. The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, plans a $1 million offensive in Texas, doubling its investment to date.
These are relatively modest sums in a state with nearly two dozen media markets.
The 2018 Senate race in Texas drew $125 million, a record, as Sen. Ted Cruz edged out Beto O’Rourke. The 2.6-point loss by the El Paso congressman was the closest any Democrat had come since 1994 to winning statewide. And it signaled Texas’ shift from red fortress to purple battleground.
Texas remains a critical building block for Republicans. Without its 38 electoral votes they have no hope of winning the White House.
State GOP chairman Allen West noted that Biden hasn’t stumped in Texas since the March 3 primary.
“If you were serious about making Texas into play, you’d be here,” he said. “They’re dumping a lot of money in here to run ads, but I’m not seeing them out on the streets block walking, or massive turnout for rallies.”
With polls tight, West has publicly and privately urged Trump to visit Texas one more time before Election Day.
“I know that he has his eyes on getting back here to Texas,” he said Monday.
Some Texas Democrats agree that Biden isn’t really trying to pry Texas from Republicans unless he shows up in person.
“What Biden needs to do if he’s serious about Texas is come make a case,” said Tory Gavito, president and cofounder of Way to Win and the former executive director of the Texas Future Project.
On Sunday, O’Rourke and Gavito co-authored a Washington Post op-ed urging the Biden campaign and national Democratic Party to steer serious money to Texas, to ensure a resounding enough defeat for Trump that he has no choice but to relinquish power.
To Gavito, the Biden campaign’s investment – initially $5.8 million, and up to $6.3 million as of Tuesday – “sounds like they want to be supportive of Texas Democrats flipping the [state] House” but are only half-hearted about contesting the 38 electoral votes.
The Dallas and Houston markets cover about half the state’s voters. She’d be more impressed if Biden were making similarly large buys from Brownsville to El Paso, too.
The state party is filling part of that vacuum.
“18 million Americans are unemployed. 7 million Americans are sick. 210,000 dead. But we can change our future. Democrats will build our country back better,” said one spot from the Texas Democrats that echoes the slogan for Biden’s economic recovery plan, “build back better.”
For decades, Texas Democrats have pleaded without success for the party’s presidential nominees to steer money into Texas, and to take even one side trip to Texas as they shuttled between Nevada, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and other toss-up states.
The Biden campaign has reserved $6.3 million in advertising in Texas in the final four weeks through Election Day.
Of that, $2.7 million is dedicated to Dallas-Fort Worth, with $1.7 million for Houston, $1.1 million for San Antonio, about a half-million for Austin, according to Advertising Analytics. About $1 million is for digital ads statewide, with the remaining half-million spread among Corpus Christi, El Paso, Laredo and West Texas markets.
Another ad tracker, Medium Buying, reported that Biden has bought time for Spanish-language radio spots in South Texas starting Oct. 13.
“This is not a money question for Democrats. The campaign is flush .… This is a question about a lack of imagination,” Gavito said, arguing that if Republicans were within a point or two in California, a Democratic bastion, “there is no way Republicans would say, ‘Well, you know we’ll take a pass this time around.’”
Trump has campaigned in Dallas and Midland-Odessa during the summer, raising eyebrows by devoting any time at all to a state his strategists insisted was safely in his column.
As unemployment and the COVID-19 death toll spiked, though, Biden’s poll numbers flared.
At one point he appeared to be leading by 5 points. More recent surveys have Trump back on top by a point or two in Texas — a solid turnaround but still, worrisome territory for a Republican, given that Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat to win in Texas, back in 1976.
The president’s bout with coronavirus lopped at least five days off his campaign schedule. He had planned to meet with donors in Dallas and Houston on Wednesday. Depending on how much longer he needs to convalesce, he may only have time to focus on Rust Belt states that he’ll need to get over the top, and hope for the best in Texas.
West expects that Trump will be healthy enough to compete at the Oct. 15 debate in Miami, and to return to the stump around then, too, with plenty of time left before Election Day to make one final stop in Texas.
“The president is very resilient,” he said. “He’s ready to get back out there and hit the trail.”
