Campaign Almanac: Haley-backed super PAC releases first Iowa ad

A super PAC backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley's presidential campaign released its first campaign ad of the 2024 presidential cycle in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The ad started airing Tuesday in the two states that will kick off the GOP nominating contests. According to the Haley-aligned Stand For America Fund, the super PAC will spend $7 million on the media buy in Iowa across broadcast, cable and digital streaming services spanning the next nine weeks. The ad will air on broadcast TV in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids media markets, and statewide on Fox News Channel.

SFA Fund, Inc. has also placed a $6.2 million media buy in New Hampshire across broadcast, cable and digital streaming services spanning the next nine weeks.

The 30-second spot highlights Haley’s stance on China, which she often cites on the campaign trail as America’s biggest adversary.

Haley delivered a foreign policy speech in June at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., on the future of U.S.-China policy amid a number of signs of growing aggression from the communist regime. And the former South Carolina governor on Monday released the second phase of her plan to combat the threat from the Chinese Communist Party — including ending normal trade relations with China to stop the flow of illicit fentanyl into the U.S., which is manufactured in Mexico using Chinese precursors and smuggled across the border.

Haley has used the topic and her foreign policy experience as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under former President Donald Trump, currently seen as the frontrunner in the race for the 2024 GOP nomination, as a defining aspect of her campaign. She has criticized both Trump and President Joe Biden for being too lenient in their dealings with China, speaking often on the campaign trail of favoring a more direct, confrontational approach with China on a number of issues.

The ad comes as Haley boosts her campaign efforts in Iowa and is meant to help that effort, SFA Fund's lead strategist Mark Harris said in a statement.

“It has long been our view that this will be the time for Nikki’s campaign to grow and it is when our effort will really launch in full,” Harris said.

Haley was among 13 Republican presidential candidates who addressed more than 1,200 people in downtown Des Moines last week at the Republican Party of Iowa’s annual Lincoln Dinner fundraiser. She held a town hall event in Iowa City the following day, and is scheduled to return to Iowa on Sunday for Iowa Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson’s BBQ Bash fundraiser in Cedar Rapids and plans to attend the Iowa State Fair the following weekend, including a "Fair-Side Chat" with Gov. Kim Reynolds and the Des Moines Register's Soapbox.

“Unlike other political leaders, Nikki Haley understands that China’s growing influence poses a monumental threat to the United States,” Harris said in a statement. “Whether it’s a farmer impacted by dubious Chinese trading practices, businesses worried about hacks, or balloons spying on our servicemen and women, Americans can count on Nikki Haley to have their back.”

The Democratic National Committee contends Haley praised China in a 2017 interview as U.N. ambassador as a "really great friend of ours" in battling the nuclear threat from North Korea, and welcomed hundreds of millions of dollars of investments from Chinese businesses as governor of South Carolina.

Never Back Down, a super PAC aligned with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, released an ad this week highlighting DeSantis' life story and military experience.

The 30-second spot, titled "Grit," begins, "Uniforms don't define a man, but they do tell a story." The ad then illustrates three uniforms DeSantis has donned: That of an electrician's assistant during college, a jersey on Yale's baseball team, and as a judge advocate officer with the U.S. Navy.

"After 9/11, volunteered to serve America in combat fatigues as a JAG with the Navy Seals in Iraq," the ad's narrator says. "The American dream takes grit like Ron DeSantis, never backing down."

DeSantis was commissioned as a U.S. Navy officer in 2004, and he deployed to Iraq in 2007.

It's the eighth ad from the well-funded super PAC supporting DeSantis' presidential campaign. The seven-figure ad buy began airing in Iowa and New Hampshire on Monday, as well as nationally on Fox News and Newsmax, according to a release from the PAC.