Believe Again, the super PAC backing Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, has spent a half-million dollars to air an ad introducing Jindal to Iowans over the next two weeks.
“We’re All Americans” is a 30-second spot that will be shown on cable and broadcast channels in Des Moines, Sioux City, and Cedar Rapids The ad focuses on Jindal’s personal history and firm stance on the issue of immigration.
“I think our immigration system is broken,” Jindal says in a clip from a recent speech shown in the ad. “If folks want to immigrate to America, they should do so legally. They should adopt our values. They should learn English. And they should roll up their sleeves and get to work.”
The commercial features pictures of the presidential hopeful with his family and his parents, who immigrated to the United States from India.
“I’m tired of hyphenated Americans. We’re not Indian-Americans or African-Americans or Asian-Americans,” Jindal says. “We’re all Americans. When my parents came to America, they were coming to be Americans.”
In a recent poll conducted in Iowa by Bloomberg Politics and the Des Moines Register, 85 percent of Republicans surveyed viewed immigration as a top issue for the 2016 presidential election.
#related#Jindal is using his anti-amnesty immigration stance to set himself apart from those establishment-minded GOP candidates who have sought to find a middle ground on the issue. In so doing, he hopes to appeal to the large number of conservative Republicans for whom a tough stance on illegal immigration and amnesty is a must in a candidate.
This could be especially important in Iowa, where Republican presidential caucus-goers tend to be more socially conservative than the national electorate as a whole. An ad buy of this size could help lift Jindal’s platform in the state, and potentially his poll numbers. At the moment, the Louisiana governor is currently polling nationally at a mere 1 percent, well outside the top ten threshold for taking the stage at Fox News’s first Republican debate in August.
— Julia Porterfield is an intern at National Review, editor-in-chief of Red Millennial, and a junior at Regent University.
Comments