Clinton campaign ads to air in Iowa

DES MOINES — Presidential candidates' campaign ads are returning to Iowa televisions today.

Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, is running campaign ads on television starting today in eight states, including Iowa.

The ads will be the first from a presidential candidate on Iowa TV since the Iowa caucuses concluded on Feb. 1 and the national primary elections ended earlier this week.

Most election forecasters rate Iowa as a likely toss-up state in the November presidential election, which will feature Clinton against presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump.

The two new ads are part of an eight-figure, six-week buy, according to the Clinton campaign.

The ads, titled 'Always' and 'Quiet moments,' focus on Clinton's work — as first lady, in the U.S. Senate and as secretary of state — on various causes benefiting women and children.

The ads note Clinton's work as first lady to expand health care access to children; the campaign said her efforts helped produce Iowa's hawk-i program, which provides health care coverage to 38,600 Iowa children of working families.

'Always' also includes clips from a Clinton caucus campaign event in Keota, Iowa, in late December 2015.

The ads also will run in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia, the campaign said.

An ad produced by Priorities USA, a Super PAC supporting Clinton, has been running in Iowa in recent weeks. The Priorities USA ad criticizes Trump for mocking a reporter with a disability during a campaign event.

The Republican National Committee issued a statement Thursday suggesting the ads exaggerate Clinton's role in the children's health care expansion, saying the ads are 'recycling debunked falsehoods about (Clinton's) biography.'

The RNC statement references stories published in 2008 by the Boston Globe and Washington Post, both of which cited lawmakers and other sources who said Clinton was not as central to the creation of the children's health care program, as she implied during her 2008 campaign for president.