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President Obama launches first TV ad of 2012 race

at 09:13 PM ET, 01/18/2012

President Obama’s campaign launched its first ad of his re-election effort on Wednesday night with a commercial that touts his successes on energy and ethics.

“Secretive oil billionaires attacking President Obama with ads fact checkers say are not tethered to facts,” says the ad’s narrator. The ad goes on to note that Obama’s ethics record is “unprecedented” and notes that the nation’s clean energy industry has added 2.7 million jobs.

The commercial is a response to an ad launched on Tuesday by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group funded by two Kansas billionaires named David and Charles Koch, that slams Obama for his ties to the failed energy company Solyndra.

“We will not respond every time a super PAC attacks the President,” said a campaign official. “The Republican candidates, Karl Rove and the Koch brothers spent more than $30 million on TV attacking the President last year, yet President Obama is competitive ahead of Mitt Romney or neck and neck with him in every single battleground state across the map, before any education has been done about Mitt Romney’s record.”

The ad will run in Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina , Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. The ad buy is “significant”, according to the source.

President George W. Bush launched his first ads of the 2004 re-election campaign in early March, roughly a month after it became clear that Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry was going to be the Democratic presidential nominee.

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