Rick Perry dipped into his substantial war chest and placed a $1 million ad buy meant to inundate Iowans with his message in the weeks leading up to the January 3 caucus.
“A heavy buy in Iowa for a week’s TV time can be bought for less than half that sum, meaning Perry will be reaching a zone-flooding level in a final bid to boost his poll numbers,” Maggie Haberman noted at Politico.
Jason Embry, writing at First Reading, deemed this is a Texas-sized ad buy for a desperate candidate. “Perry has been on the air for weeks in Iowa and he’s still well out of the lead there, so this may not work. Plus, a number of candidates are just starting to get on the air in Iowa, so he won’t have the field to himself. But what other choice does he have?”
MSNBC’s First Read has the latest ad-spending totals, which show Perry has laid down $5.1 million on ads across the country, a full $3.9 million of that in Iowa alone. (Ron Paul and Mitt Romney trail behind him in Iowa spending, shelling out $1.2 million and $322,000 respectively.) Additionally, the pro-Perry SuperPAC Make Us Great Again is the third-largest overall ad spender overall with $2.5 million.
If you live in Iowa, get used to seeing these commercials.
“Strong”
In this ad, Perry rails against Obama’s “war on religion” in America. “You don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can openly celebrate Christmas or pray in schools,” he says. With this video, Perry is angling for the Huckabee vote, Ben Smith wrote at Politico.
In a second religion-focused ad, Perry slams liberals for viewing faith as a sign of weakness. “I’m Rick Perry. I’m not ashamed to talk about my faith,” he says. The Associated Press sees an unspoken message in the ad: Perry hopes to distance himself from Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. “Romney is a Mormon, a religion many evangelicals view skeptically. Gingrich, who recently converted to Catholicism, has been married three times and acknowledged infidelity in his first two marriages.”
Make Us Great Again, a unaffiliated pro-Perry SuperPAC, dropped nearly $400,000 on airtime in Iowa and South Carolina to run “Elites,” according to the Houston Chronicle’s Perry Presidential blog. The ad slams Washington elites for “wrecking America” and touts Perry’s status as a Washington outside and his record as a budget cutter.
