He wasn’t invited, but Seth Moulton wants to crash the first Democratic presidential primary debates.

The Massachusetts congressman, polling at 0 percent, is doing anything he can to get on television this week. Despite not qualifying for the debates, he’s traveling to Miami, anyway. And since he won’t be among the 20 candidates on stage Wednesday or Thursday, he’s purchasing commercial airtime to reach viewers in the early primary and caucus states.

“I won’t be on the debate stage tonight, so I’m introducing myself here,” Moulton says at the start of a direct-to-camera, low-budget spot, which the campaign says will air “during or right before” coverage of the debate on MSNBC in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Moulton is just one of several candidates and outside political groups seeking to elbow in on a captive audience of Democratic voters tuning in for the first major events of the 2020 campaign, offering them an unrivaled opportunity to reach the electorate on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo this week.

That’s particularly attractive for Moulton and the handful of other candidates advertising during or around the debates. Whether or not they will be participating in the debates this week, they are barely registering in the polls — and because the Democratic National Committee’s criteria are growing more stringent, they are in extreme danger of being excluded from debates beginning in September without a break-out moment.

Joining Moulton on the airwaves around the debate is a fellow member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is launching her ad campaign this week on broadcast TV in the early states. But Gabbard’s advertising seeks to supplement her debate performance — she’ll be on the stage on Wednesday night.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee will also be on stage on Wednesday night, and he’ll be getting some backup from a super PAC formed to support his candidacy, Act Now on Climate, which has purchased broadcast advertising in Iowa.

Like Moulton, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock was denied a spot on the stage. But he’s seeking to counterprogram the debates in a different way: traveling to Iowa and New Hampshire and holding televised town-hall events in the hours leading up to the debates. Bullock’s town hall in Iowa will air on Des Moines’ NBC affiliate on Wednesday at 4 p.m. Central Time, ending just three hours before the start of the first debate.

For Moulton and Bullock, these moves are their only chance to get noticed during Debate Week. Moulton, in particular, has little hope of qualifying for future debates: He has earned 0 percent in all 20 of the DNC-approved qualifying polls for the first two debates. Gabbard and Inslee each earned the requisite 1 percent in at least three qualifying polls, while Bullock got his third 1-percent poll after the deadline to qualify for the first debate, but all, thus far, are well short of the criteria for the third debate: 2 percent in at least three polls between the first debate and a late-August deadline, and 130,000 unique donors to their campaigns.

It isn’t just the candidates looking to piggyback off the debate coverage — a number of outside groups are also running ads around the debates to push their political and policy goals, according to Advertising Analytics, a firm that tracks ad buys.

There’s the hyper-political: The conservative Club for Growth is spending $7,000 for one minute-long ad on Des Moines’ NBC station on Thursday night to hit former Vice President Joe Biden, who is the strongest challenger to President Donald Trump in way-too-early general-election polls. The ad catalogs a series of past Biden stances and controversial comments on racial issues and his treatment of women.

In a statement announcing the ad buy, David McIntosh, the Club’s president and a former Indiana congressman, acknowledged that the ad was designed to exploit Biden’s weaknesses “according to our polling.”

“We believe voters have a right to know what they’re getting, and with Joe Biden they’re getting a history of dumb and offensive comments and policies,” said McIntosh.

Another conservative group, the Judicial Crisis Network — which ran millions of dollars in ads to boost the confirmations of Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — is kicking off a more than $1 million ad campaign. The group claims Biden and the other candidates have “a secret list” of prospective Supreme Court appointees. “Tell Joe Biden: ‘Trump released his list. Why won’t you?’” a narrator says at the end of the ad.

(There’s no evidence Biden’s campaign has compiled a list of people he could nominate to the high court, though outside liberal groups are reportedly collecting names to recommend should a Democrat occupy the White House after the 2020 election.)

The group is spending $40,000 — $20,000 on Wednesday and $20,000 on Thursday — to air its ads in the D.C. market alone, which home to an elite though mostly-late-voting audience, in terms of the presidential primary calendar.

Then there’s the collection of special-interest groups looking to tout their pet issues to voters looking for debate coverage. D.C. Statehood Initiative, Job Creators Network and Californians for Energy Reform are all running ads on MSNBC on Wednesday or Thursday, according to Advertising Analytics.

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