Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is closing in on Iowa by launching his first paid televised ads for the 2020 presidential election cycle in the state, his campaign announced Tuesday.
Sanders spent $1.3 million on the ad buy in Iowa, the first state to vote in the Democratic primary.
The senator’s in-house production team created the 30-second and 60-second ads, titled “Fights for Us.” They will run in Iowa for about two weeks beginning Thursday morning.
The 60-second version of the ad flags President Donald Trump as a “dangerous demagogue” and highlights Sanders’ long history of activism, briefly featuring a photo of a 21-year-old Sanders being arrested at a protest against segregation in Chicago schools in 1963.
The announcement for the ad came shortly after Sanders’ campaign revealed that the senator raised $25.3 million from about 1.4 million donations in the past three months.
However successful his fundraising, Sanders was still dragging behind Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden at third place in a recent poll of likely Democratic caucus attendees in Iowa.
Warren, who surged in the poll as Biden fell to second place, made an aggressive ad buy last week, spending at least $10 million in advertising in the first four states to vote in the 2020 Democratic primary, including Iowa.