McAuliffe Campaign Targets Taylor Swift Fans With New Ads Against Youngkin

VIRGINIA — The campaign of Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee for governor in Virginia, on Tuesday started running political advertisements on Facebook, Instagram and Google about the dispute between Taylor Swift and her record label.

What does this dispute over Swift's music have to do with this year's gubernatorial election in Virginia?

As it turns out, the Republican candidate for Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin, was co-CEO of The Carlyle Group, when the private equity firm worked with a record label, music executive Scooter Braun's Big Machine Label Group, to acquire all of Swift’s master recordings in 2019.

Swift didn’t like the deal and accused the new owners of her former record company of trying to prevent her from playing her own songs. She reached out to the Carlyle Group in an attempt to get the private equity firm to intervene in the deal at the time, arguing that the acquisition had made it hard for her to perform her music.

“Controlling a woman who didn’t want to be associated with them. In perpetuity. That means forever,” Swift said in a Tumblr post in 2019.

Virginia voters will start seeing two versions of the Swift ads from McAuliffe’s campaign on Facebook, Instagram and Google.

From its early days, the music recording industry has taken advantage of recording artists, many of whom sign contracts they end up regretting even before the ink is dry.

The ruthless nature of the recording business is well-known, with even some of the most successful artists in music history mixed up in contracts they should have never signed.

The McAuliffe ads include images of Swift and Youngkin with the hashtag #WeStandWithTaylor.

The Democratic Governors Association tweeted in February about the Carlyle Group's involvement in Swift’s master recordings, criticizing Youngkin for his role in the acquisition.

"This is not exactly why we elect #DemGovs but it’s definitely part of it," the DGA said.

The public finance disclosures of McAuliffe, who served as governor from 2014 to 2018, reveal that he invested at least $690,000 in Carlyle Group funds between December 2007 and the end of 2016. “In 2019, McAuliffe was a passive investor at Carlyle, and did not have any investments associated with Taylor Swift’s masters,” Renzo Olivari, McAuliffe’s press secretary, told Axios.