Candidate: Jim Gingrich
Ad: “Just Wish”
Transcript: “I’m Jim Gingrich, and most of my memories of my mom are of her being sick. It’s why public schools were a lifeline. I had to work my way through college. And, like Mom, I could never give up. It led to my career building companies, helping workers succeed and now running for mayor. I’ve tried to make my mom proud. I just wish she could have seen even some of this.”
Analysis: Gingrich’s latest ad takes a more personal and emotional approach than his previous two have. Much of his campaign has been built around distancing himself from the other candidates through a “I’m not like the other people up here” approach, using his time as an AllianceBernstein executive to argue that his business background makes him uniquely qualified to be mayor. But this go around, he presents voters with the story of his upbringing, and how his mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when he was only nine years old. While we don’t see anything in the way of policy, it is by far the most humanizing ad we have seen, and could play to a side of voters that has not been tapped yet.
Where people can see it: Broadcast TV, streaming and digital