Never Back Down, the super PAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' GOP presidential bid, is out with a new ad featuring DeSantis' life as a young adult.
"Uniforms don't define a man, but they do tell a story," a narrator in the ad says, before detailing DeSantis' time working as an electrician's assistant in college, being a member of the Yale baseball team and serving in the Navy after 9/11.
The ad will run in Iowa and New Hampshire and on some cable channels nationally, the group said in a press release. Never Back Down said there is a “seven-figure ad buy” backing the commercial.
It’s the group’s eighth TV ad — but the first to detail DeSantis’ life before he served in public office. Typically known as a “bio ad,” commercials like the one Never Back Down is launching are usually run by candidates at the outset of their campaigns to introduce themselves to voters before they dive into policy and legislative proposals.
The group's previous ads focused much more adamantly on DeSantis' rhetoric, sometimes forgoing a narrator just to play sound from DeSantis' speeches and rallies. Others parrot DeSantis' rhetoric on "wokeness," attacking Disney and Bud Light by name for statements they've made in support of LGBTQ people.
The super PAC has spent $15.8 million on ads backing DeSantis so far this year, second only to MAGA Inc., the super PAC backing former President Donald Trump's 2024 bid. Never Back Down also has almost $1.4 million worth of airtime reserved for the future, though that is subject to change.
Amid all the spending, DeSantis is struggling in the polls.
In a New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday, 17% of potential Republican primary voters said they planned to vote for DeSantis. Meanwhile, 54% of Republicans said they planned to vote for Trump.
In April, weeks before DeSantis announced his presidential campaign, several polls found support for him among the field of candidates to be as high as 31% (per an NBC News poll) and 38% (per a Wall Street Journal poll), though always still trailing Trump.
