Harris’s Ad-War Message: Trump Is Pro-Billionaire, She Worked at McDonald’s

Flush with cash and fresh off the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is flooding the airwaves and the internet with advertising that is meant to combat an overarching weakness: Voters trust former President Donald J. Trump more than her on the economy.

The ads, targeted to the battleground states, lean into Ms. Harris’s middle-class background. They aim to tell Americans that she is the candidate who understands the pain of stubbornly high prices and can help tame inflation, pointing to her plans to lower the cost of housing, food and other daily necessities while calling Mr. Trump an ally of billionaires and giant corporations. They are being complemented by similar spots from the biggest super PAC supporting her, Future Forward.

The Harris campaign said it spent $150 million on ads in August and announced that it would reserve $370 million worth of ads between Labor Day and the November election. Digital ads will account for $200 million of that spending in the coming months, a tremendous sum that underscores the increasing need to reach voters on their phones and other devices.

For Ms. Harris, the new wave of ads signals a shift in message and tone from President Biden on the economy.

Mr. Biden, who has worked in and around politics since 1970, sometimes struggled to express empathy for the high costs frustrating Americans, preferring to talk about other indicators that showed the economy was doing well. Ms. Harris, for her part, is trying to run as a change candidate — despite her status as a vice-presidential incumbent — so she can free herself from the burden of Mr. Biden’s record and draw a contrast with Mr. Trump.

What the ads say

Ms. Harris has rolled out roughly half a dozen new ads over the last week or so.

Several pull from statements she made when she unveiled an economic agenda this month intended to lower costs. In one ad, she recounts her single mother’s experience buying their first family home, before promising as president to crack down on corporate landlords and build three million new homes and rentals.

“My mother saved for well over a decade to buy a home,” the vice president says. “I was a teenager when that day finally came and I can remember so well how excited she was. I know what homeownership means. And, sadly, right now, it is out of reach for far too many American families.”

In another, Ms. Harris talks directly to the camera, noting that “middle-class families like the one I grew up in” want “lower prices and lower taxes.” She pledges to focus on the “future,” not the “politics of the past.”

One ad seeks to draw a direct contrast with Mr. Trump, accusing him of fighting “for billionaires and large corporations.”

“I will fight to give money back to working- and middle-class America,” Ms. Harris says.

A fourth ad tries to tie her to some of Mr. Biden’s most popular accomplishments, including lowering the cost of some expensive prescription drugs.

“She’s already lowered the cost of your health insurance and medications,” a narrator says. “Insulin is now capped at $35 for seniors. But there’s more to do, because mortgages, rents, groceries and utility bills are still too high.”

Another lays out Ms. Harris’s biography, saying she grew up as “the daughter of a working mom” and “worked at McDonald’s while she got her degree” as photos of her upbringing flash across the screen.

A final new ad deals with immigration and crime, other weak points for Ms. Harris. The ad points out that Mr. Trump ordered his Republican allies in Congress to scuttle a bipartisan deal to heighten security at the border while highlighting Ms. Harris’s time as a prosecutor in California. “Trump just talks tough,” a narrator says. “Kamala Harris is tough.”

What the ads are trying to do

Ms. Harris is now at a delicate point in her campaign.

She seamlessly took over the ticket from Mr. Biden, drew tens of thousands of supporters to rallies in battleground states and held a smooth national convention.

But with those early hurdles out of the way, Ms. Harris must now begin the difficult work of cementing the image of herself that she wants to project in the minds of voters. Even though she has served for four years as vice president, many Americans are still getting a sense of who she is and what she stands for.

And Mr. Trump has unleashed a flurry of attacks — accusing her of being too liberal, calling her stupid, saying she is joined at the hip to Mr. Biden on inflation and immigration, and questioning her race — although his chaotic approach suggests he has not yet figured out what will stick with voters.

Her new ad campaign seems aimed first and foremost at highlighting her biography as a woman who grew up in the kind of middle-class home voters might find next door. Ms. Harris, 59, is telling a life story that Americans may connect with more easily than that of Mr. Biden, 81. She also seems more comfortable directly addressing the fact that many voters believe prices are still too high.

The ads portray her as a fighter for the middle class who will take on big companies and billionaires, unlike Mr. Trump. And they use somewhat more aggressive language — “corporations that rip us off” — against those targets than Mr. Biden had.

Many Democrats had urged Mr. Biden to attack corporations directly for rising prices. On Tuesday, the liberal advocacy journalism group More Perfect Union released polling that suggests that voters in battleground states are eager to hear that message. Roughly 80 percent of those surveyed said they believed big businesses were becoming “too powerful,” and a majority blamed “corporate greed” for rising prices.

“What people want is a form of populism, of government intervention to do something, to help improve their lives,” said Faiz Shakir, the group’s executive director and a longtime adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The Harris campaign is also trying to spread its message beyond television, computer and phone screens. This week, it said campaign surrogates would host nearly 20 events across a dozen states about the high cost of housing and Ms. Harris’s plans to lower prices.