\n
![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/GettyImages-2169673481-e1725722217627.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n [ad_1]
\n<\/p>\n
Democrats have denounced it in hundreds of ads and billboards,\u00a0printed it in oversized book form<\/a>\u00a0as a convention prop, and mentioned it in seemingly every speech and press statement.<\/p>\n Now, they will take their campaign against the conservative\u00a0Project 2025 blueprint<\/a>, written by allies of Republican\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>, to the skies above college football stadiums in key swing states.<\/p>\n Democratic National Committee<\/a>\u00a0-sponsored banners pulled by small airplanes are flying Saturday over Michigan Stadium, where the defending national champion Wolverines have a marquee matchup against Texas, and at home games for Penn State and Wisconsin. A banner set to fly over Georgia\u2019s home game might be affected by weather.<\/p>\n Vice President\u00a0Kamala Harris<\/a>\u00a0and her allies have spent months warning about Project 2025, betting that the initiative makes Trump seem especially extreme. More than 900 pages and produced by the conservative\u00a0Heritage Foundation<\/a>, the plan lays out how Trump in his second term might do everything from\u00a0firing tens of thousands of federal workers<\/a>\u00a0to abolishing government departments to imposing new restrictions on abortion and diversity initiatives.<\/p>\n Trump\u00a0has rejected a direct connection<\/a>\u00a0to Project 2025, though he\u2019s also endorsed some of its key ideas.<\/p>\n Saturday\u2019s gambit is putting Democratic messaging over stadiums with a total capacity of 380,000-plus, with tens of thousands of fans more in the vicinity of each game.<\/p>\n \u201cJD Vance \u2018hearts\u2019 Ohio State + Project 2025,\u201d reads the message going over Michigan Stadium, suggesting Trump\u2019s running mate loves the project as much as he famously does Michigan\u2019s hated archrival.<\/p>\n In Wisconsin, which is hosting South Dakota, the message is \u201cJump Around! Beat Trump + Project 2025,\u201d a nod to fans jumping with enough ferocity to shake Camp Randall Stadium when House of Pain\u2019s \u201cJump Around\u201d plays between the third and fourth quarters.<\/p>\n Georgia, hosting Tennessee Tech, and Penn State\u2019s Bowling Green matchup are getting more general messages urging fans to \u201cBeat Trump, Sack Project 2025 \u2014 though weather patterns along the flight route made it uncertain whether the Georgia banner would fly.<\/p>\n Banners will start flying around four hours before kickoff and could continue into the games, depending on air marshals\u2019 decisions in each location, said DNC deputy communications director Abhi Rahman.<\/p>\n The aerial blitz follows Harris\u2019 campaign and party bring up Project 2025 multiple times each day, often unprompted.<\/p>\n The DNC marked Labor Day by arguing that Project 2025 would undermine overtime rules and \u201chard-fought\u201d worker rights. It also paid for internet ads on the initiative that flashed up for users searching \u201cback to school.\u201d Democrats have further pointed to Project 2025 in seemingly incongruous places, while highlighting Vance getting booed at a recent firefighters convention or slamming Trump for laying into his perceived political enemies in online posts.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want people to know exactly what Project 2025 is, what the ties are to Trump,\u201d Rahman said. \u201cFinding creative avenues to get the message out is something that we\u2019re always trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Democratic strategist Brad Bannon warned that Harris\u2019 focus on Project 2025 \u201ccan\u2019t overwhelm her positive message about the changes she wants to make.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe can\u2019t afford to go overboard,\u201d he said, \u201cif it interferes with her establishing her own personal profile.\u201d<\/p>\n A large portion of Saturday\u2019s game crowds, meanwhile, may support Trump. Many college football fans hail from rural, more Republican areas, well beyond the confines of reliably Democratic college towns.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the really interesting things when political candidates try to leverage sports is that they\u2019re putting themselves at risk,\u201d said Amy Bass, who is a professor of sport studies at Manhattanville University in Purchase, New York.<\/p>\n She pointed to Trump being surprised to get booed while attending Game 5 of the 2019 World Series \u2014 though the former president also made largely successful stops at tailgates before the Iowa-Iowa State football game in 2023 and when South Carolina hosted Clemson after last Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n Sports crowds have \u201ca propensity to get loud, also have the added layer of alcohol and tailgating and all kinds of things pregame, and they haven\u2019t curated that crowd,\u201d Bass said.<\/p>\n Rahman, though, shrugged off such concerns.<\/p>\n \u201cThey can get rowdy all they want at a banner,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the message is definitely there. It\u2019s there for a reason.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nRecommended reading:<\/strong>
In our new special issue, a Wall Street legend gets a radical makeover, a tale of crypto iniquity, misbehaving poultry royalty, and more.
Read the stories.<\/a> <\/div>\n