Somewhere in America is a group of young people who want to see Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) become the next president of the United States. And this weekend, they’re going to let an awful lot of Iowans know it.
Students For Daniels, a 37-chapter campus group of Daniels supporters based at Yale, is buying TV ad time in southern Iowa during this Sunday’s NFL ProBowl to run a TV ad urging Daniels to run. Students for Daniels claims the ad will be the first TV spot of the 2012 presidential cycle.
The 30-second commercial, which targets youth voters who supported Obama in 2008, was shot on Yale’s campus and stars Courtney Pannell, a senior majoring in political science at the Ivy League university.
Max Eden, national director for the group and himself a senior majoring in history at Yale, told TPM that the group has no official connection to Daniels, but says that the governor and potential 2012 presidential contender has taken an interest in the growing organization and is keeping up with what Eden and his crew are up to.
Daniels, of course, is just one of the long list of Republicans flirting with a bid at the White House, and is expected to be no closer to a public announcement of his intentions this weekend than any other in the near-term. But Eden said running the ad will help boost Daniels’ name ID in the all-important first caucus state in Iowa and perhaps push Daniels into the race.
Eden said he’s a former Obama supporter who doesn’t know where he falls on the political spectrum these days. So why Daniels? Eden said the former Bush administration budget director and social moderate can capture the spirit of change and economic resurgence that Eden says Obama promised but hasn’t yet delivered. He said Daniels’ social message — the Republican famously called for a “truce” in the social debate until the nation’s economic problems are solved, drawing fire from a large section of the Republican base — could make him the candidate for young fiscal conservatives in 2012.
“The question is what are our politicians going to be talking about in 2012? And if our politicians are talking about social issues and not talking about the debt you won’t see follow through [from voters],” Eden said. “I mean America does not want to wax philosophical at this point when we have survival-level threats that are facing us.”
Eden started gravitating toward a Daniels presidency in October and launched the Students for Daniels group this month. Asked if he had to bet on whether or not Daniels will do as he asks and run for the White House, Eden said his money would be on a presidential bid.
“At this point I’ve spent a lot of my time trying to get him in, so yeah, I bet that he’s in,” Eden said.
Running the ad on KSDM-TV in Iowa during the game this weekend cost $1,250, a price Eden said was paid for by members of the group “and a couple of our relatives.”
Watch the first campaign ad of 2012:
