President Joe Biden’s reelection team is making a monthlong push to amplify the president’s State of the Union message and build on its infrastructure, kicking off what it’s calling the “I’m on Board” campaign.
“We’re excited to announce our effort to take the President’s message on the road with our March month of action ‘I’m on board’ campaign,” campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told reporters, pointing to new efforts to “dramatically expand our volunteer engagement, scale up our battleground staff, launch our coalition groups, and invest in new paid media campaigns.”
In the weeks to come, Biden will hit the road and visit key battleground states that he narrowly won in 2020 in hopes of galvanizing voters that will prove crucial to clinching a second term in office.
There are plans for Biden and Harris to travel to every battleground state in the coming weeks, the campaign said Friday.
The president kicks off that travel Friday with a visit to Pennsylvania followed by Georgia on Saturday, putting him on track for another split-screen moment with Donald Trump who will also be in the Peach State. Next week, Biden will head to New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, will focus her travel on Arizona and Nevada, in an effort to shore up Latino voters.
The campaign will spend this month “dramatically expanding our brick-and-mortar presence across key states,” said battleground states director Dan Kanninen, including more than 100 new offices and 350 new team members, who will spend the month training volunteers.
Contrasts with Trump: After Biden spent much of Thursday’s address drawing contrasts with former President Donald Trump, whom he did not name, one of Biden’s top advisers extended that contrast to how they run their respective campaigns.
“Trump’s bleeding cash. He’s really behind and building an infrastructure that you’d expect to be seeing of a former president. He’s really not focused on building new people to his side,” said Jen O’Malley Dillon, a former top White House adviser turned campaign chair.
Among the voters the Biden campaign is trying to bring into its coalition are those who voted for GOP candidate Nikki Haley, arguing that Trump has dismissed them while the Biden campaign has embraced them.
Ad push: The campaign will also launch a $30 million, six-week paid media campaign on digital and television targeting voters in battleground states. This push will include running ads around highly-watched programming, on Black and Hispanic-owned media outlets, and on sports and cultural channels. That includes ESPN and Comedy Central, which airs The Daily Show, which Jon Stewart has been hosting on Monday nights. The campaign also is planning a push around the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament.
