Obama launches first TV ad for 2012 campaign (video)

0

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is launching his first television ad, defending his energy record and citing his work to toughen ethics rules. The ad opens by citing “secretive billionaires attacking President Obama” and says that the president has added 2.7 million clean energy jobs while reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. It calls Obama’s record on ethics “unprecedented.”


An Obama campaign official says the campaign has bought time in at least six states that will be critical to the president’s re-election bid — Michigan, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Iowa — and on national cable. The effort, dubbed “Unprecedented,” launched 1/19.

The effort seeks to counter attack and get a jump on Republicans while they battle (what are they on now, debate #112?) over selecting their nominee to challenge him.

Even though the ad won’t air in the battleground state of Florida, Obama will be traveling there to announce a strategy for promoting tourism. The state, where the unemployment rate is 10%, will award 29 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. The Democratic candidate carried the state twice and the Republican twice in the last four elections.

Obama’s advisers have said spending by independent groups will change the landscape of this election. His chief political strategist, David Axelrod, said that is among his top concerns for the re-election effort this year.

“They’re talking upwards of half a billion in negative ads aimed at the president from interest groups who don’t disclose and who can raise unlimited amounts of money,” he said 1/15 on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The Obama campaign also is considering running ads in media markets for Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada and Pennsylvania, Bloomberg quoted an official as stating.

RBR-TVBR observation: Looks like broadcasters in those states –along with Michigan, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Iowa — should be reaching out with innovative, multiplatform ideas to the Obama for Re-election Campaign as soon as possible. Certainly those states will have plenty of money from earmarked from Republican candidates and PACs as well.