• OR-05: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee just launched an ad campaign in concert with state Rep. Janelle Bynum to boost her ahead of Oregon's May 21 Democratic primary, deploying an unusual strategy to ensure its preferred candidate secures the Democratic nomination in the state's swingy 5th Congressional District.
In the ad, which AdImpact reports is backed by a $116,000 buy over the coming week, Bynum introduces herself as a busy working mom. A narrator soon takes over and tells viewers that Democrats in the state legislature passed laws guaranteeing equal pay and raising the minimum wage.
The voiceover then switches gears slightly. "In Congress," says the narrator, "Democrats will fight for Oregonians by holding CEOs accountable for price gouging to bring down housing and grocery costs."
These references to the Democratic Party, rather than a more typical message that would focus solely on Bynum, are deliberate: They enable the DCCC to take advantage of a seldom-used loophole in campaign finance law that allows the committee to spend much more than it would normally by deploying what's known as a "hybrid" ad.
Normally, a party committee like the DCCC has two options for boosting candidates. Most commonly, it can engage in spending without coordinating directly with a candidate's campaign, a practice known as an independent expenditure; such spending is uncapped.
But if the committee wants to work hand-in-hand with a particular candidate, it's limited to $61,800 per election cycle under the FEC's rules for so-called coordinated expenditures.
Hybrid ads work differently. As Simone Pathé, then working at Roll Call, explained in 2016, the practice was first pioneered by George W. Bush's reelection campaign in 2004. By referencing a party writ large—as opposed to just a single candidate—Republicans argued that Bush and the Republican National Committee should be able to split advertising costs above the normal limits.
In one such ad attacking John Kerry on health care, the narrator twice referenced "John Kerry and liberals in Congress." Writing in the New Republic at the time, Jonathan Cohn slammed the spot for its "gross distortions" of Kerry's health care plan. But as Pathé recounts, Democrats soon adopted the tactic themselves, and the FEC never clamped down on it.
In order to succeed, however, such messages require an environment where one party is either on the outs—as Bush's strategists were betting was the case for Democrats in 2004—or is sufficiently popular, such as when Democrats repeatedly blasted Illinois Rep. Bob Dold "and the Republicans," the example that sparked Pathé's investigation.
Politico reported that the DCCC spent more than 30 times the normal coordinated expenditure limit to air its barrage against Dold, who lost reelection in a suburban Chicago district that has swung sharply to the left. In addition, when it comes to hybrid ads, stations charge the lower ad rates that candidates are entitled to rather than the higher rates third-party groups face.
In a Democratic primary, though, the DCCC can readily expect that voters have a positive view of the Democratic Party: National polling from Civiqs, for instance, shows that 81% of Democratic voters have a favorable opinion of their party. In this case, the committee would like to see Bynum make it past attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who narrowly lost to Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer in 2022.
However, McLeod-Skinner has since been the subject of multiple stories reporting that she abused her campaign staff and led some to fear for their physical safety. Not long after the most such recent report, the DCCC weighed in on the race, adding Bynum to its "Red to Blue" list that highlights top-tier Democratic House candidates.