Democratic presidential hopeful runs SC ad aimed at reaching African Americans
Democratic Presidential hopeful Cory Booker is hitting the radio airwaves in South Carolina.
The New Jersey U.S. senator has bought air time on African American radio stations around the state in hopes of increasing enough support to make the next Democratic presidential debate.
In the ad, Booker discusses his upbringing and challenges his family encountered to buying a home. He also discusses his efforts in Newark, New Jersey, to fight landlords and to help families stay in their homes.
“When I was a baby, my parents tried to move us into a neighborhood with great public schools,” Booker says in the ad. “But Realtors wouldn’t sell us a home because of the color of our skin. Activists ran a sting operation to get us into a house. They changed the course of my entire life. My dad told me, ‘Boy, never forget where you came from.’ ”
The five-figure ad buy has one-minute long spots running on eight radio stations in Columbia, Greenville, Florence and Charleston.
African American voters are key to winning the South Carolina Democratic primary, scheduled for Feb. 29, and winning the primary here is seen as an indicator of how a candidate will do among black voters across the South.
“Here in South Carolina, you cannot win an election if you don’t connect and engage with black voters — and with this ad, we’re speaking directly with voters across the state,” said Christale Spain, Cory Booker’s South Carolina state director.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has had a large lead among black voters in South Carolina, while other candidates have yet to make significant gains.
Booker has made several visits to the state, including earlier this week when he met with black men at his campaign headquarters in Columbia.
The ad is aimed at introducing Booker as he strives to make the next debate stage which requires polling at 4% in four different polls and having at least 200,000 individual donors. Booker has met the donor threshold, but not the polling threshold to qualify for the Dec. 19 debate.
This is the campaign’s first major radio ad in the state. The campaign ran another radio ad over the summer that aired in Florence and centered around an event Booker held. The campaign has not run any television ads in S.C. markets yet.
This story was originally published December 6, 2019 at 11:05 AM.
