Political advertising ethics has long been dominated by an adherence to the norms of democratic idealism or the highly situational ethics of act utilitarianism. This article proposes an alternative system of political advertising ethics grounded in Brandt’s ideal moral code theory, a form of rules-based utilitarianism. To illustrate the relative advantage of rule utilitarianism, the author investigates the ethics of advertising campaigns aimed at intervening in an opposing party’s primary. The past decade has seen a dramatic resurgence in Democratic and Republican candidates in the United States meddling in the opposing party’s primary through advertising campaigns designed to exploit tensions between electability and viability within the political outgroup. The author critiques the common act-utilitarian defenses of interparty–intraparty intervention and proposes a rule-utilitarian alternative that prioritizes the preservation of democratic norms over individual election outcomes. Political advertising’s failure to live up to its democratic potential may be rooted in the lack of a clear ethical foundation for considering systemic and long-term risks in utilitarian decision-making. Here I summarize, critique, and integrate the dominant theories of normative ethics in political marketing: democratic idealism and act utilitarianism. I argue that each of these ethical systems has serious limitations in political advertising contexts and propose a rule-utilitarian alternative that incorporates the benefits of each system, while calling on political advertisers to value systemic risks like polarization and anti-democratic discourse in their decision-making. Below I argue that the failure to fully incorporate democracy into political marketing decisions may be a product of overreliance on an act-utilitarian system of normative ethics and a failure to consider democracy’s long-term benefits. I further argue that rule utilitarianism provides a strong and much needed theoretical foundation for political marketing and political advertising professionals deeply rooted in the preservation of liberal democracy. Maloney’s defense of the DCCC’s, 2022 advertising strategy and McCaskill’s defense of her own advertising campaign a decade earlier are characteristic of a broader tendency in political advertising to emphasize short-term election results and ignore long-term systemic risks like polarization and anti-democratic discourse. Democratic Idealism and Act Utilitarianism in Political Advertising This section synthetizes two of the major normative approaches to political advertising ethics in the academic literature. Ethicist Richard Brandt ( 1965 ), one of the leading proponents of rule-utilitarian ethics, describes a version of rules-based utilitarianism he labels Ideal Moral Code theory . Brandt builds his ethical theory around the central maxim: “An act is right if and only if it would not be prohibited by the moral code ideal for the society; and an agent is morally blameworthy (praiseworthy) for an act if, and to the degree that, the moral code ideal in that society would condemn (praise) him [sic] for it” (pp. 119, 120). Under Brandt’s system, rather than evaluating individual acts based on their utility, moral rules are established at a societal level based on their ability to maximize utility. For rules to be effective, they must be easily accessible and internalized by actors (Brandt, 1979 ), removing the temptation to develop exceedingly complex rules with numerous caveats and exceptions and ultimately collapsing back into act utilitarianism. Rule utilitarianism still requires actors to establish rules based on previous data and clear societal goods, but political advertisers would not be justified in violating utilitarian rules based on the characteristics and contexts of a particular campaign. Second, rule utilitarianism allows for the incorporation of societal norms like democracy into decision-making. Act utilitarianism would treat an advertiser’s intention in sharing false information as irrelevant in determining the praiseworthiness or blameworthiness of their actions. The sharing of false information would be judged exclusively on the direct outcomes of the lie. By contrast, rule utilitarianism allows decision-makers to be held to certain expectations, such as fidelity to their own beliefs, when that adherence is connected to an optimific rule. Rule four proposes a more direct route to supporting democracy while avoiding many of the limitations of act utilitarianism. Act-utilitarian reasoning has allowed candidates to paradoxically advance or elevate anti-democratic rhetoric in the name of democracy preservation. Candidates have reasoned that election outcomes should be reversed, and the peaceful Act utilitarianism, the primary alternative to democratic idealism, is subject to the cognitive biases and bounded rationality of decision-makers, including confirmation bias and partisan motivated reasoning. In practice, act utilitarianism has failed to consider systemic and long-term risks and provides no basis for coordinated action across an industry or society. Rule utilitarianism and Brandt’s ( 1965 ) ideal moral code theory provide an alternative that capitalizes on the benefits of utilitarianism while embracing democracy. This short-term thinking is characteristic of the act-utilitarian judgments that predominate marketing ethics (Wilkins, 2016 ). Based on this limitation, I propose that candidates and advertisers should rely on rule-utilitarian principles to guide their ethical judgements and provide four such rules as a starting point. Rule utilitarianism is better situated than act utilitarianism to center long-term sources of utility like democracy and democratic institutions. Political marketing and consulting firms are uniquely situated to integrate such norms into their policies and operations and to direct clients away from systemic risks like undermining democracy.