Donald Trump’s campaign plans to spend $2 million on new campaign ads in Virginia, despite reports last week that he was pulling resources from the battleground state and shifting them elsewhere.
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Campaign officials announced the latest move on Monday, in addition to revealing a 19-member Virginia leadership team comprised of individuals with strong ties to their communities and previous experience serving in the state legislature or Congress.
“The members of the Trump Virginia team are highly respected and accomplished leaders from all across the Commonwealth,” Mike Rubino, Trump’s senior state adviser, said in a statement released by the campaign.
“Republicans have unified for a Trump victory this November. With the expertise of these leaders, Mr. Trump will win Virginia,” Rubino declared.
The ad will air in “key markets” across the swing state, according to the campaign, and comes just days after NBC News reported Trump was “pulling out” of Virginia to focus instead on Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida.
Corey Stewart, who served as the chairman of Trump’s Virginia campaign until he was fired last week, had responded to the report by calling the move “totally premature.”
“The only thing the campaign had to do was spend money on an ad campaign and it would have been competitive,” he told NBC News. “I’m just disgusted.”
According to CNN, Trump has 30 paid staffers working for him in Virginia, in addition to dozens of volunteers. The GOP nominee trails Hillary Clinton by 8.7 percentage points among likely voters in the battleground state, according to the latest RealClearPolitics state-level polling average.
