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In New Jersey, the most expensive attack ad in the governor’s race so far this fall accuses the Republican nominee, Jack Ciattarelli, of wanting to be “the Trump of Trenton.”
In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for governor, has spent millions of dollars casting her Republican rival, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, as an acolyte of President Trump and supporter of his policies. “Sears speaks for Trump,” the narrator warns in one recent ad.
And in California, a blizzard of TV ads has urged voters to fight against Mr. Trump — by backing a ballot measure to redraw the state’s congressional lines. “We can stop Trump cold,” Gavin Newsom, the state’s Democratic governor, says in that campaign’s most-aired ad.
After a year of soul-searching and introspection by Democrats about what they should stand for after losing the White House and Senate in 2024, the party is largely coalescing behind the same message that has united it for the past decade: stopping Donald J. Trump.
From coast to coast, the tactical decision to continue centering Mr. Trump in advertising in the closing stretch of 2025 contests has left some party strategists concerned about a missed opportunity to forge a more forward-looking vision.
“I worry that Donald Trump is like crack cocaine for our party,” said Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster.
Ms. Lake acknowledged that running against an unpopular president could prove smart politics in the short term, revving up the Democratic base in states he lost last year, such as California, New Jersey and Virginia. But she warned it was urgent for Democrats to begin rebuilding their own beleaguered brand. The party’s standing notably has not improved in polls, even as Mr. Trump’s own image has sunk.
“Trump is very seductive because when you put up an ad that’s anti-Trump, you get a lot of small-dollar contributions, you get a lot of activists saying, ‘Great job!’” Ms. Lake said. “The biggest thing the Democrats need to do is not the negative but the positive. We have to offer an alternative.”
Ms. Spanberger and the Democratic nominee for governor in New Jersey, Representative Mikie Sherrill, have run positive ads about their own agendas and accomplishments. Ms. Sherrill’s service as a Navy helicopter pilot, in particular, has been spliced into numerous spots. And supporters have made the case that victories by these two moderate women with national security credentials would help reset the party’s image.
But the airwaves have been cluttered with Trump-related attacks, according to a New York Times review of the television ads this year compiled by the ad-tracking service AdImpact. Ms. Sherrill linked Mr. Ciattarelli and Mr. Trump in an ad as early as the spring, even before she had won the Democratic primary. Ms. Spanberger’s campaign has spent more than $6 million on ads linking Ms. Earle-Sears and Mr. Trump, records show, even though Mr. Trump has not technically endorsed Ms. Earle-Sears.
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Brad Todd, a veteran Republican admaker and political strategist, mocked Democrats for using Mr. Trump — over and over — to rile up their liberal base.
“If I were running a Democratic campaign, I would be attempting to broaden my coalition beyond a visceral hatred of Trump,” Mr. Todd said.
“To get a mandate to govern,” he added, “you have to win over voters in the conflicted middle.”
The 2025 elections are playing out in mostly more favorable terrain for Democrats. In the 2024 presidential race, Mr. Trump lost both states with governor’s races this year, and he was routed badly in California.
Yet Democratic strategists know that red states and districts will be crucial to the party’s chances in the 2026 midterm elections, in terms of both winning a House majority and trying to flip the Senate, which would require winning in at least three states Mr. Trump carried in 2024.
“I don’t think anti-Trump will be a sufficient message in the 2026 midterm and the 2028 general to mobilize and persuade the kind of voters who have been eroding from the Democratic Party,” said Terrance Woodbury, a Democratic pollster who specializes in studying younger voters and minority groups. At the same time, Mr. Woodbury, who is involved in the California redistricting ballot campaign, said his own research showed that Mr. Trump was the biggest motivator for voters right now.
“As long as Trump is on the political stage, he can’t not be part of the political conversation,” he said. “He can’t be the entire political conversation.”
In Virginia, Spanberger campaign ads have highlighted Ms. Earle-Sears’s support for Mr. Trump’s signature budget legislation, and her refusal to criticize federal work force layoffs in a television interview. “It’s a real issue that Sears supports Trump, not Virginians,” one of the ads says.
An exasperated Ms. Earle-Sears interrupted Ms. Spanberger’s closing statement at a recent debate to declare, “If I were taking a drink for every ‘Trump’ that she said, I tell you we would be drunk by now.”
TaNisha Cameron, a spokeswoman for Ms. Spanberger, said in a statement that “every day through Election Day, we will remind voters of the contrast in this race.”
In New Jersey, a group called Greater Garden State linked to the Democratic Governors Association has spent more than $2 million on an ad showing a photo of Mr. Ciattarelli and Mr. Trump together and calling him “100% MAGA.”
The Trump-themed ads have been so omnipresent — including some in Spanish — that the Ciattarelli campaign felt compelled to respond in its own ads.
“New Jersey’s a mess, and all Mikie Sherrill wants to talk about is President Trump,” Mr. Ciattarelli complained in one spot. “Come on. What does the president have to do with rising property taxes and higher electricity bills?”
There could be more to come. Mr. Ciattarelli gave Mr. Trump an “A” grade at a recent debate, and the Sherrill campaign has hit him for not breaking with the president on his decision to withhold funds for the Gateway tunnel project connecting New Jersey and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan.
“While Mikie Sherrill has focused her entire campaign on how much she hates Donald Trump, people here in New Jersey are focused on who can fix the state and only one candidate is talking about that,” said Chris Russell, an adviser to Mr. Ciattarelli.
In one of the other high-profile races of 2025, for New York City mayor, the Democratic nominee, Zohran Mamdani, has drawn attention for his success in making his campaign about an ambitious agenda of free buses, universal child care and a rent freeze. He has also swiped at Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor who is running as an independent in the general election, by linking him to Mr. Trump for the president’s efforts to meddle in the race.
In California, Mr. Trump is at the center of Mr. Newsom’s bid to redraw the state’s congressional maps and counter the partisan gerrymander in Texas pushed through at the president’s behest. Mr. Newsom has recorded multiple ads about the president’s role and the campaign has recruited surrogates including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to warn about Mr. Trump.
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Meanwhile, Tom Steyer, the Democratic financier who once bankrolled a campaign to impeach Mr. Trump before his own failed presidential campaign, is spending money to run anti-Trump ads.
He announced a $12 million campaign in favor of Proposition 50, the redistricting measure, that imagines an angry Mr. Trump throwing fast food after the measure passes in November. The ad’s tagline is straightforward: “Stick it to Trump.”
The anti-Trump theme has trickled down the ballot, too.
In at least two races for Virginia’s House of Delegates, Democratic candidates have run ads linking Republican rivals to Mr. Trump. And in the race for Virginia attorney general, Jay Jones, the embattled Democratic nominee, has made linking the Republican incumbent, Jason Miyares, to Mr. Trump a centerpiece of his advertising. Mr. Jones’s campaign has threatened to come undone after the revelation of private text messages discussing the hypothetical killing of a Republican lawmaker.
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“When it comes to standing up to Trump, Jason Miyares is too weak,” the narrator says in one Jones ad. The Miyares campaign has countered by accusing Mr. Jones of being weak on crime.
Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, said that ignoring an unpopular president who motivates voters would make no sense for the party.
“A lot of Democratic voters look at Trump as an emergency and an emergency happening in real time,” Mr. Garin said. “Regardless of how they feel about anything else, standing up to Trump is a really important motivator for them.” In that way, Mr. Garin called the 2025 races “a precursor to what will be very much a checks-and-balances election in 2026.”
But Chris LaCivita, who served as a top strategist for Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign, said Democrats were stuck running a “one-dimensional strategy.”
“It’s all anti-President Trump — that’s all they can speak to,” Mr. LaCivita said. “They have literally nothing to run on that helps the American people and the middle class.”
Shane Goldmacher is a Times national political correspondent.
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