National Democrats are launching an ad in Wisconsin and other swing states attacking Green Party candidate Jill Stein, calling her a spoiler candidate designed 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 in the state being tied.

The Democratic National Committee ad, titled “Crucial,” will run on television stations in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, three so-called “blue wall” states that are crucial to Democrats’ chances of winning the White House. retain. It shows a photo of Stein turning into a photo of Trump, as a narrator says, “Stein was key to Trump’s 2016 victories in battleground states.”

“She has no regrets about helping Trump win,” the ad says. “That is why a vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump.”

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

Ramsey Reid is leading the Democratic National Committee’s independent and third-party campaign. In an interview with WPR, he said they are spending six figures in the three states.

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

Stein last attended the Wisconsin vote 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 a similarly close election, with Biden winning by 20,682 votes.

Stein Campaign: ‘We completely reject spoiler messages’

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

“We don’t want Trump or Harris to win,” Call said. “We completely reject spoiler messages. This is democracy. People have to vote their conscience.”

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

Wisconsin Green Party elections chairman Pete Karas echoed Call’s concerns, saying that while the DNC accused Stein of being a spoiler in 2016, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate received 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 off state ballots “so people don’t have a choice.”

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

The ad is the latest attack on Stein by the DNC, which in August asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to block her from appearing on the ballot. The DNC claimed Stein cannot legally appear on Wisconsin ballots because the statewide Green Party does not have the officeholders or legislative candidates needed to appoint presidential electors in the state. Call told WPR at the time that it was a frivolous lawsuit “designed to waste our time and resources.”

A week later, the Supreme Court declined to consider the DNC’s petition and the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted on August 28 to add Stein to the presidential ballot. The committee also added independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, who unsuccessfully sued to be removed from the ballot. . On September 28, the Supreme Court rejected Kennedy’s request, stating that he could not demonstrate that a lower court ruling should be overturned.

In a statement to WPR, Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Brian Schimming accused state Democrats of “blowing over democracy” while smearing third-party candidates “in a desperate attempt to deprive uncomfortable opposition.”

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

The DNC’s ad campaign comes at a time when recent polls show the race between Harris and Trump to be very close, especially in Wisconsin. A Marquette University Law School poll of voters released on October 2 showed Harris with a 4 percent lead. Since then, four other surveys of Wisconsin voters showed Trump with a slight lead, or on par with Harris.