As President Biden tours Pennsylvania, his campaign will run a new ad promoting his commitment to organized labor and attacking the economic policies of former President Donald J. Trump.
The ad features JoJo Burgess, who is a steelworker and the mayor of Washington, Pa., a small town southwest of Pittsburgh. Mr. Biden is scheduled to speak on Wednesday at the headquarters of the United Steelworkers union in Pittsburgh, where he is expected to call on his trade representative to increase some tariffs on steel and aluminum products from China.
“Donald Trump has shown through his history that workers mean nothing to him,” Mr. Burgess says in the ad, a minute-long spot. “Right now, we have the most pro-American worker president in office that we’ve ever had in our history.”
The Biden campaign said it was spending in the “mid-six figures” to push the message across television and digital platforms in Pennsylvania, separate from a $30 million ad campaign across the major battleground states. It hopes the ad will complement news media coverage of Mr. Biden’s three-day Pennsylvania visit, which is set to conclude on Thursday in Philadelphia. Winning the state, where he narrowly defeated Mr. Trump in 2020, is crucial to his re-election strategy.
The new ad amplifies the argument that Mr. Biden is pursuing against Mr. Trump on the economy, accusing the former president of siding with billionaires over workers. In a speech laying out his tax policy on Tuesday in Scranton, his hometown, Mr. Biden laid into Mr. Trump.
“He learned the best way to get rich is to inherit it,” Mr. Biden said of his rival.
Mr. Burgess, a Democrat, was a guest of Mr. Biden’s at the president’s State of the Union address in 2022. He became the first Black mayor of Washington, Pa., last year. The Biden campaign said the ad featuring Mr. Burgess would run during news programs, as well as on regional sports networks.
The campaign also released a shorter ad with Mr. Burgess for digital platforms. In that ad, Mr. Burgess defends Mr. Biden against attacks from Mr. Trump and other Republicans on his age and mental fitness.
“When you meet him, this guy is as sharp as a knife,” Mr. Burgess says of the president. “They have nothing else to attack because they can’t attack the things that he is doing that are so good for this country.”
