On the heels of a polling surge, Elizabeth Warren this week rolled out a sample of new digital and TV ads her presidential campaign will run in the four early-voting states.
But the top-tier White House hopeful’s one-minute spot called “Root Out Corruption” features a jarring segment.
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About 23 seconds into the commercial, the senior senator for Massachusetts talks about how her “second chance” to become a teacher after forfeiting George Washington University debate scholarship to marry her high school sweetheart at 19 was earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Houston.
“My second chance was a commuter college that cost $50 a semester. Today there are fewer paths to America’s middle class and even fewer second chances,” Warren says over footage of a woman in a red shirt driving a Lexus.
A Warren campaign spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for clarification.
The starting price of the 2019 Lexus RX 350 — not necessarily the car driven in the ad — is $43,570.
The ads coincide with a series of polls indicating Warren is in an effective dead heat for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination with Joe Biden.
In a strategy memo circulated this week by her campaign manager Roger Lau, he foreshadowed the team’s coming investments in media.
“Right now, our biggest expense as a campaign is our staff, but as the campaign heats up, it will be on media to reach potential voters,” he wrote. “It will be more digital than old-school broadcast television, and we have built an in-house staff to produce videos and ads rather than adopt the consultant-driven approach of other campaigns (and the big commissions and fees that come along with it).”
Lau added the campaign was also building out its network in states hosting March primaries and caucuses, including California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, and Texas, to support down-ballot races.
“Remember: this election is about more than just beating Donald Trump — he’s just the worst symptom of a corrupt system. If we want to make big, structural change, we need to make sure Democrats control the U.S. House and Senate and win important gubernatorial and state legislative races across the country,” he wrote.
