Ben & Jerry’s ice cream will not make a political advertisement for Democratic candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar, despite naming a flavor for him last week.
Campa-Najjar was one of seven “progressive” candidates honored by the company last week with a special flavor of ice cream that company owners Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield will make at home in a limited 40-pint release for each of the winners. (His is “Ammar-Etto American Dream.”
But the owners are only cutting ads for five of the seven, in coordination with the left-wing activist group MoveOn.org. That is because, the company told NBC News, the two candidates could not raise the money for an “efficient” media buy in their respective markets. (Campa-Najjar is running in California’s 50th congressional district, near San Diego, but the other candidate, Jess King, is running in Pennsylvania’s 11th district, outside Harrisburg.)
NBC News adds:
“We are lending what we can, which happens to be ice cream, to highlight their races and hopefully send the message to people around the country that if you want to support someone in this upcoming election, these are some really good candidates to support,” he said.
“These candidates exemplify those Ben & Jerry’s values of compassion, economic justice social justice. If that’s what you’re into, these are the guys to vote for.”
The new spots are similar for all five candidates — Cohen and Greenfield are briefly shown on camera talking about the importance of this election, sharing praise of each candidate. The ads start airing Monday on MSNBC, CNN and Comedy Central.
Some of the ads have already been launched:
Campa-Najjar had raised over $2.4 million through the end of September, with over $680,000 cash-on-hand, according to OpenSecrets.org. His Republican opponent, incumbent Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), has raised just over $975,000, with just under $250,000 cash-on-hand. (Hunter was recently indicting for misusing campaign funds; he says he is innocent and that the charges are politically motivated.)
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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