DNC launching Wisconsin ad attacking Green Party candidate Jill Stein

National Democrats are launching an ad in Wisconsin and other swing states attacking Green Party candidate Jill Stein, calling her a spoiler candidate meant to hand the election to former President Donald Trump.

The ad comes as recent polls show the race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris tied in the state. 

The ad from the Democratic National Committee, titled “Crucial,” will run on broadcast TV stations in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, three so-called “blue wall” states that are critical to Democrats’ chances of keeping the White House. It shows a picture of Stein that transforms into a picture of Trump while a narrator says “Stein was key to Trump’s 2016 wins in battleground states.”

“She’s not sorry she helped Trump win,” the ad states. “That’s why a vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump.”

The ad closes with video of Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally where he said he likes Stein “because she takes 100 percent from them,” referring to Democrats.

Ramsey Reid manages the Democratic National Committee’s independent and third party campaign operation. In an interview with WPR, he said they’re spending six figures across the three states.

“We know that the election is going to be really close, and we saw how Jill Stein’s spoiler campaign impacted the election in 2016,” Reid said. “And with the margins as close as we think that they’re going to be in the battleground states, we want to make sure that voters know that a vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Donald Trump, and we don’t want to take anything for granted.”

Stein was last on the Wisconsin ballot in 2016, when she received 31,072 votes. That year, Trump won the state by 22,748 votes. In 2020, Stein was not on the ballot and Democratic President Joe Biden defeated Trump in an election that was similarly close, with Biden winning by 20,682 votes.

Stein campaign: ‘We reject the messaging of spoiler completely’

Stein campaign manager Jason Call told WPR, the DNC’s ad is “false.”

“We don’t want Trump or Harris to win,” Call said. “We reject the messaging of spoiler completely. This is Democracy. People should vote their conscience.”

With regard to Harris, Call criticized her and Democrats’ support for Israel amid what he calls the nation’s “genocide” in Palestine. But he said both parties are part of a “duopoly” that support a “corporate funded war machine.”

Wisconsin Green Party Elections Chair Pete Karas echoed Call’s concerns and said while the DNC has blamed Stein for being a spoiler in 2016, the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate got more votes in Wisconsin that year. Former Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson received 106,674 votes in Wisconsin’s 2016 presidential race.

Karas said Democrats used the spoiler argument in 2020 to keep the Green Party of state ballots “so that people do not have a choice.”

“We feel that it is unfair, and we are going to fight back,” Karas said.

The ad is the latest attack against Stein by the DNC, which asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court in August to keep her from getting on the ballot. The DNC claimed Stein can’t legally appear on Wisconsin ballots because the Green Party doesn’t have any statewide office holders or legislative candidates required to nominate presidential electors in the state. At the time, Call told WPR it was a frivolous lawsuit “intended to waste our time and resources.”

The Supreme Court declined to consider the DNC’s petition a week later and the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted to add Stein to state presidential ballots on Aug. 28. The commission also added independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, who sued unsuccessfully to be removed from the ballot. On Sept. 28, the Supreme Court rejected Kennedy’s request stating he failed to show a lower court ruling should be overturned.

In a statement sent to WPR, Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming accused state Democrats of “bloviating about democracy” while smearing third-party candidates “in a desperate bid to disenfranchise inconvenient opposition.”

“‘Democracy for me, but not for thee’ is a losing strategy,” Schimming said. “Voters have no appetite to reward Democrats for their flagrant hypocrisy or their abysmal record over the last four years.”

The DNC’s ad campaign comes as recent polling shows the race between Harris and Trump especially close in Wisconsin. A Marquette University Law School poll of voters released Oct. 2 showed Harris with a 4 percent lead. Since then, four other surveys of Wisconsin voters either showed Trump with a slight lead or tied with Harris.