Pro-DeSantis Fight Right PAC Launches $1.4 Million Iowa Ad Buy Ripping Haley: ‘New Hampshire Corrects Iowa?’

The pro-Ron DeSantis super PAC Fight Right placed a $1.4 million statewide ad buy in Iowa hitting rival Nikki Haley, who is polling at parity with him in the Hawkeye State, for her joke last week that New Hampshire voters will “correct” the Iowa caucus result. The ads will run on cable, broadcast, satellite, and digital through caucus day, January 15, National Review has learned.

Fight Right has taken an outsized role in boosting DeSantis’s ad game after the pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down canceled ads in Iowa, where former president Donald Trump leads in polls by double digits. “Nikki Haley told New Hampshire what she really thinks about Iowa,” a narrator says in the ad, before it cuts to a replay of comments made by Haley saying “You know Iowa starts it; you know you correct it,” and a second clip of her saying: “Iowa starts it, you change personalities, you go into New Hampshire.”

“New Hampshire corrects Iowa?” the narrator asks in the ad. “Nikki Haley doesn’t respect you. She thinks New England knows better.”

“Why should Iowans support another fake politician who disrespects them?” the narrator asks. “How can you trust Nikki Haley when she doesn’t trust you?”

DeSantis’s orbit is bullish on Haley’s comments, pushing them in recent days in interviews and on social media to portray the former South Carolina governor as unfairly elevating New Hampshire over the first-in-the-nation caucus state. The DeSantis campaign launched a separate TV ad in Iowa earlier this week hitting “Wall Street-funded” Haley on similar grounds, arguing that she “disparages the caucuses and insults you.”

The ad buy is an effort by DeSantis allies to remind Iowans that the Florida governor has spent months staking his candidacy there, visiting all of the state’s 99 counties in the lead-up to next week’s contest. And it comes before DeSantis and Haley are set to square off during a CNN debate on Wednesday in Iowa. Trump will counter-program the event with a Fox News town hall nearby.

The former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador is hoping to ride the momentum of a better-than-expected performance in Iowa to a surprise upset on January 23 in the Granite State.

A spokeswoman for Haley, who is nipping at DeSantis’s heels in Iowa and holds a comfortable second-place standing behind front-runner Donald Trump in New Hampshire, dismissed the Fight Right ad buy as “desperate.”

“This is what voters like about Nikki — she’s a real person, she’s not scripted, and she likes to have fun,” Haley spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas tells NR. “DeSantis is getting more desperate by the day and has repeatedly said he’s going to win Iowa. Let’s see how that works out for him.”