One of the leading Democratic super PACs is pledging to spend $30 million defining potential Republican presidential candidates during the 2028 primary season.
The Priorities USA effort, described first to NOTUS, is aimed at younger, disengaged voters living in seven battleground states. Priorities USA is training its attacks on Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The four digital ads, which will start airing digitally on Monday, are satirical, irreverent and Gen Z-coded in their content and tone. Priorities USA’s Executive Director Danielle Butterfield said that’s meant to match the social media platforms where they’ll appear.
The group is expected to brief potential Democratic presidential candidates on its program and broader research portfolio throughout this summer and fall, according to a person directly familiar with the meetings. Priorities USA is one of several Democratic super PACs that have been involved in presidential politics in recent cycles, all competing for donors and a lane in the outside spending ecosystem.
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“Priorities is running true digital-first campaigns that are going to reach people where they are in a way that actually breaks through, and we intend to start that work now and really show people that we’re good at this,” Butterfield said. “We deserve a seat at the table and will have a seat at the table in whatever happens ahead of 2028.”
Two of the ads feature cartoonish versions of Vance and Rubio, mocking Vance for his devotion to President Donald Trump — “our great leader,” a narrator says — and turning Rubio into the “little Marco invasion action play set.” Two more ads, vertically orientated, ridicule Republicans for cost-of-living increases, splicing together Vance’s pledge that prices “are going to come down” with news coverage of gas prices spiking due to the Iran war.
Priorities USA plans to use “behavioral targeting” to find disengaged voters using their own online search history.
Searching for information about paying down student loan debt or buying a home, for example, are behaviors that indicate “you’ve become persuadable,” Butterfield said, “and that’s a moment where it makes sense for us to advertise to you in some way, shape or form.”
Priorities USA announced a similar effort ahead of the 2020 primary, also focused on attacking Trump. But Butterfield said the group’s efforts ahead of 2028 will seek out young, hyper-online voters who avoid politics, rarely interacting with traditional news coverage. In a memo accompanying the ad buy launch, Priorities USA argued that more than 40 percent of voters don’t seek out political content, but still ingest it passively through social media — a disconnect Democrats struggled to overcome during the 2024 election.
“Now is the time to really remind voters that as you are experiencing these gas prices,” Butterfield said, “we’re connecting the dots back to who is to blame for that.”
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