In the 2024 presidential campaign, Republicans found a tagline that seemed to resonate with undecided voters: “Kamala is for they/them. Donald Trump is for you.”

Two years later, the GOP is reviving it. According to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, Republicans and their allies have spent more than $40 million this year on ads featuring some version of the line. Much of that money is aimed at Democratic candidates in Senate battlegrounds, notably James Talarico in Texas and Mary Peltola in Alaska.

But many of this year’s ads keep only half the formula. The 2024 spot paired its attack on Kamala Harris with an economic pitch for Donald Trump — the “for you” half of the line. Many of the new ads skip the economy entirely, and the two most expensive ones never mention the Republican candidate they’re meant to help.

That could prove a costly omission. With the president historically unpopular and voters concerned about the high cost of living, some strategists doubt the attack will land the way it did in 2024.

“Powerful taglines that evoke strong emotions are like used cars: They decrease in value over the years,” Drew Westen, a longtime Democratic political strategist and psychology professor, told MS NOW.

And unlike in 2024, Republicans now control the White House and both chambers of Congress, making voters’ economic anxieties harder to pin on Democrats.

“The price of pronouns is zero. The price of oil, diesel, and groceries is skyrocketing,” Westen added.

There’s another difference from 2024: Unlike Harris, many of the Democrats being targeted by this year’s crop of ads are responding directly. And when they do, they’re making it clear that they don’t support transgender and nonbinary people as much as their opponents insist they do.

The 2024 ad, paid for by Trump’s campaign, drew 1.5 billion impressions, according to AdImpact. It primarily focused on Harris’s support for giving incarcerated transgender people access to gender-affirming care, and concluded by highlighting Trump’s record on the economy — implying a vast gulf between the candidates’ priorities.

Democratic strategists — and even Harris herself — conceded its effectiveness.

The controversial leaked autopsy report prepared for the Democratic National Committee after the 2024 campaign said the party’s internal pollsters determined the ad was “very effective,” but that instead of directly responding, “the focus needed to be on attacking Trump.”

In “107 Days,” her post-election memoir, Harris conceded that Trump’s team was “right” that the tagline offered a “winning message,” though “not to the extent that has become conventional wisdom.” Her campaign, she noted, responded with economy-focused ads in battleground states.

Many of this year’s ads lack the same punch the Trump/Harris one did.

The clearest example is in Texas, where a committee backing Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton has spent $20 million on an ad targeting Talarico that debuted last month. The spot focuses on his support for gender-affirming care for transgender minors and has earned 1.1 billion impressions, according to AdImpact. It concludes with “James Talarico: For they/them, not you.” It does not mention Paxton at all.

A second, similar ad from the PAC, backed by another $17 million, has drawn more than 900 million impressions so far — and also fails to mention Paxton or his policies. And Politifact found that the ads’ central claim — that Talarico supported using taxpayer funds for gender transition surgeries on minors — is not even true.

Talarico hit back with a response ad last week accusing Paxton of “lying about my record.”

“No, I don’t support sex-change surgeries for kids,” Talarico says in the spot. His campaign spent $4.3 million on it and it has 430 million impressions so far.

The ads against Peltola, paid for by the pro-Trump PAC No Going Back, hew closer to the 2024 template. They state the candidate and former member of Congress “wants our money working for they/them.” The ad then pivots to her opponent, incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, who they say “voted to use our tax dollars only on the things that help us, not they/them.” The PAC has spent more than $3.8 million to air the ads, which have 8.6 million impressions so far, according to AdImpact.

Peltola rejected that attack’s central claim in her own ad: “No, I don’t want kids getting surgeries to change genders or men in girls’ bathrooms.” Her campaign paid under $300,000 for the spot, which has 3.6 million impressions so far, according to AdImpact.

Democrats in key House races rated toss-ups by the Cook Political Report — Rep. Don Davis in North Carolina’s 1st congressional district and Joanna Mendoza in Arizona’s 6th congressional district — also directly responded to Republican attack ads that they would prioritize “they/them” over their potential constituents.

Their messages reflect a broader shift. Polling suggests a sizable share of Americans support barring transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports. Democrats — including Talarico — have responded accordingly, softening their prior defenses of trans people and citing concerns about “safety and fairness.” That shift could blunt the force of Republicans’ “they/them” attacks.

Tyler Hack is executive director of the Christopher Street Project, an advocacy group that supports transgender people in politics. She said the 2024 ad from the Trump campaign “was effective due to a lack of a Democratic response.” But she does not see the glut of current ads as relevant to most voters’ concerns.

“In contrast to issues like the economy and the war in Iran, this is not something affecting most Americans,” Hack said.

She noted that polling suggests most Americans say they do not know a transgender person. Trans people account for about 1% of the U.S. population.

Bernadette Breslin, national press secretary for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, defended the ads, telling MS NOW, “Parents deserve to know when radicals… are on the wrong side” of issues.

But the tagline has not always proven successful for the party.

During last year’s Virginia gubernatorial campaign, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears spent $1.8 million on an ad declaring that “radical Abigail Spanberger is for they/them — not us.” Spanberger won anyway. Hack believes that’s partly because Spanberger took the attack head-on.

“She addressed it on TV, didn’t back down, didn’t throw anyone under the bus, and won,” Hack said.

Republican candidates have also unsuccessfully used the tagline to attack their own in primaries.

Sen. Bill Cassidy’s PAC put out an ad accusing Rep. Julia Letlow, his then-challenger for the GOP Senate nomination, of being “with they/them.” Letlow — who was endorsed by Trump and is hardly a progressive ally — ultimately triumphed after Cassidy failed to even make it to the runoff.

Similar attack ads failed to work for Rep. Thomas Massie in his unsuccessful bid to fend off a primary challenge from Ed Gallrein in his Kentucky district, or a dark money group that ran an attack ad against Mike Mazzei, a Trump-backed Republican in Oklahoma’s GOP gubernatorial primary.

Still, not everyone is convinced the tagline is worth abandoning. Veteran Republican strategist Charlie Black told MS NOW he believes the “they/them” ads “will be a salient issue in a place like Texas.”

Westen, though, thinks they “will only have an impact if [Democrats] don’t respond or respond poorly, and they are at least responding better than last time.” 

“I think voters are so focused on what’s happened to them and their ability to pay their bills,”  he continued, “that pronouns are not likely to have much of an impact on their gut-level feelings towards the candidates, which is how most people vote.”

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From MS Now.