Campaign Almanac: Tim Scott places $8M ad buy in Iowa, New Hampshire

Republican presidential candidate and South Carolina U.S. Sen. Tim Scott’s campaign is laying down $8 million in a TV, radio and digital ad buy in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Scott’s second major ad buy includes a $6.6 million TV ad buy that will run through the end of November. The buy includes broadcast TV, cable and satellite.

In addition, Scott’s campaign said it will launch six-figure radio and digital ad campaigns during that period.

The latest buy shows Scott’s campaign is doubling down on an ad-heavy campaign strategy that senior campaign officials say it sees paying off ahead of the first GOP debate next week in Milwaukee, Wis.

“As he prepares to take the debate stage, it is clear he not only is the best messenger and most consistent conservative in the race but also has the resources to win,” a senior Scott campaign official told The Gazette.

The ad buy makes Scott the first 2024 contender to place ad reservations that extend past Labor Day. It also comes as Scott sees a slight polling increase in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

Scott enters the third quarter armed with $21 million cash-on-hand, the second most of any Republican candidate and more than Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden.

Nikki Haley-backed super PAC drops new ads in Iowa, New Hampshire

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A super PAC backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley's presidential campaign released two new ads Thursday in Iowa and New Hampshire highlighting Haley’s stance on China, which she often cites on the campaign trail as America’s biggest adversary.

The ads are part of a $13 million ad buy in the two early states that will kick off the GOP nominating contests, according to the Haley-aligned Stand For America Fund.

The 30-second Iowa spot “Spine” includes a clip of Haley at a campaign event saying, “We need to take China head-on” and proposing banning China from purchasing any “American soil whatsoever.”

“And we don’t stop there. We take back the U.S. soil they have already purchased,” Haley says in the ad.

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 last month 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 front-runner 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.

Gazette-Lee Des Moines Bureau