Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg spends $2 million on first SC-wide TV ad
Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg will drop his first statewide ad in South Carolina on Tuesday, part of a $2 million ad buy in the state that includes digital and radio, his campaign said.
The 30-second ad, titled “Welcomed Me,” uses fragments of his speech given last month at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Liberty and Justice Celebration, a yearly party for the state whose voters are first to pick their preference for the Democratic presidential nominee.
News of the ad was first reported by MSNBC last month.
While the remarks on the ad are not from any he has made at South Carolina campaign appearances, the ad does include at least one clip of him in the state, sitting on a porch in Hopkins with a black female voter.
The ad signals part of a broader S.C. investment the candidate is making in the country’s “First in the South” primary on Feb. 29 as Buttigieg works to introduce himself to S.C. Democratic voters — and, more specifically, black voters who make up more than 60% of the S.C. Democratic primary electorate.
Buttigieg’s campaign now has four offices and 40 full-time staffers on the ground in South Carolina.
The ad will begin to air in South Carolina as the Indiana mayor makes his seventh trip through the Palmetto State, spending a core of his three-day trip reaching out to black voters.
On Monday, Buttigieg planned to visit the site of the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre at S.C. State University, after which he took tour of the campus, according to his campaign. South Carolina State is the state’s only public historically black university.
In the TV ad, Buttigieg says:
“In our White House, you won’t have to shake your head and ask yourself, ‘Whatever happened to, ‘I was hungry and you fed me. I was a stranger and you welcomed me?’
When I say we’ve got to unify the American people it doesn’t mean pretending that we’re all the same.
It means unifying around issues from wages and family leave to gun violence and immigration.
The hope of an American experience defined not by exclusion but by belonging.”
Editor’s note: After clarification, this article has been updated to reflect that least one of the clips in Pete Buttigieg’s new statewide ad includesvideo of him campaigning in South Carolina.
This story was originally published December 2, 2019 at 9:30 AM.
