Body
A new push to make child and elder care a more prominent issue in the 2026 midterm elections is set to arrive in television and digital advertisements, backed by a $50 million spending plan aimed at tying caregiving costs to the country’s affordability debate.
The Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, which operates a political action committee, said the effort is designed to keep caregiver issues from being treated as niche and instead to place them alongside other household costs that voters weigh in congressional races. The group announced the ad strategy as child care costs continue to rise and as families face longer waits for federal child care subsidies, which support working parents in poverty.
Campaign executive director Sondra Goldschein said child care and elder care matter because the bills can directly shape voting decisions. She said the pressure is especially acute for the “sandwich generation,” which she described as middle-aged adults caring simultaneously for their children and for their parents. Goldschein also linked caregiving expenses to the affordability conversation, saying that when child care costs more than rent or a mortgage, or when families must sacrifice a paycheck to care for a loved one, it can influence how people vote.
The campaign said it plans to direct support for Democrats into multiple Senate races and House races, along with volunteer work to talk with voters about caregiving. It said it will back Democrats in Senate contests in North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Maine and Ohio, and in House races in Iowa and Pennsylvania, while also dispatching volunteers to engage voters.
Goldschein said the messaging is intended to resonate as families face a broader list of rising costs, including climbing gas prices driven by a war in the Middle East that has been unpopular with many voters. The group’s pitch frames child care affordability as intertwined with national questions about whether policies can keep basic needs within reach.
The campaign’s announcement came after congressional action in the past several years that expanded federal child care funding, which the group said later narrowed as the pandemic aid ended. It pointed to a 2021 law that provided $39 billion in aid for child care, allowing states to offer support to more families and subsidizing wages for child care workers. The campaign also described a later Biden effort to create nationwide universal prekindergarten and to expand subsidies so that families would not pay more than 7% of household income for care, noting that the proposal failed in Congress and that pandemic-era support has since dried up.
It said Democrats have increasingly centered child care affordability in recent elections, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who ran on universal child care, and Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, who ran on expanding child care subsidies. The group also said this election cycle includes universal child care pledges from candidates such as Janeese Lewis George, running for mayor in Washington, D.C., and Francesca Hong, running for governor in Wisconsin, and it cited New York Gov. Kathy Hochul as pledging to support Mamdani’s ambitions and eventually expand universal child care statewide.
The Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy contrasted that Democratic approach with Republicans’ focus on child care as a workforce development issue, saying GOP proposals have generally been less dramatic. The group said Republicans last year used what it described as President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill to expand eligibility for a child care tax credit, increase child care aid for military families, and offer tax credits to employers that provide child care to their workers.
The campaign also pointed to the Trump administration’s recent emphasis on cracking down on fraud in child care subsidies, including a viral video alleging that Somali-run child care centers in Minneapolis billed the government for children they were not caring for. It said state inspectors later disproved the video’s core claims, while noting the administration attempted to freeze child care funding for Minnesota and five other Democratic-led states before a court ordered the funding released.
Separately, the group said neither the White House nor the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees federal child care programs, responded to requests for comment.