Sherrod Brown: Elon Musk Crowd: BOO!!! Sherrod: Peter Thiel Crowd: BOO!!!! Sherrod: Donald Trump Crowd: BOOOOOOO!!!!

Prime example of what @adamkovac talks about of bandwagon groups running ads on the #10 ranked issue in the hopes of stealing credit for a victory that had nothing to do with them. Literally the playbook The Groups™️ run every cycle.

There are two kinds of outside-group ad: 1. Help an organization's allies by advertising on the issues that that candidate has identified work well in their favor, or against their opponent (typically identified through a redbox). This is usually NOT an issue the org itself cares about; the point is that the candidate appreciates the ads because it's a message that their internal polling tells them works. This is the strategy employed by AIPAC, crypto pacs, Leading the Future, and lots of others. 2. An ad on the organization's pet issue (like this ⬇️), which hasn't been identified as a candidate's favored message. The goal of these ads is really for the org to piggyback on the candidate's expected victory by spinning after the election that the race hinged on their pet issue. But candidates don't really like this, and it benefits the org's spin more than it builds appreciation for the candidate. This strategy is being employed by AI safety PACs, who are generally more interested in elevating the perceived salience of their issue than in building political allies.