First Sanders TV ad spotlights candidate's personal history
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will be airing his campaign's first television ad this week, touting the Vermont senator's record in championing "real change."
Starting Monday, the ad will run for ten days on network affiliates in Iowa and New Hampshire, the campaign told CBS News. It cost the Sanders camp just over $2 million.
The minute-long spot focuses on Sanders' progressive politics, with mentions of his opposition to the Iraq war, his tackling of Wall Street and a "corrupt political system," and his fight for tuition-free public colleges.
"People are sick and tired of establishment politics and they want real change," Sanders' voice says in the ad.
But the video also highlights Sanders' biographical history, telling a story of his roots as the son of a Polish immigrant growing up in Brooklyn, New York. The ad's narrator emphasizes Sanders as "husband, father, grandfather," showing photos of the senator over the years with his growing family. And with video of Martin Luther King's historic March on Washington -- a major Civil Rights event Sanders marched in -- the spot positions the Democratic contender as a candidate "building a movement with you."
Asked why the candidate is choosing to air ads now, Sanders' communications director Michael Briggs told CBS News that "we're moving into a new phase of the campaign."
"What we have found in Iowa and New Hampshire, the more people get to know about Bernie, the more they like him," Briggs said. "It's another way to help voters in Iowa and New Hampshire get to know him better."
Three months from the first Iowa contest, Sanders trails closely behind rival Hillary Clinton by three points, according to a recent CBS News poll of likely Democratic caucus-goers in the state. In New Hampshire, Sanders holds a double-digit lead over Clinton, though the former secretary of state has made gains since September.