Ramaswamy drops an 8-figure ad buy to close out the primary

Vivek Ramaswamy is planning to spend a massive sum of money on an ad campaign designed to reverse his decline in the polls.

The 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur will drop an eight-figure buy across broadcast, cable, radio, digital and direct mail in two key early voting states. All told, the expenditure will be to the tune of as much as $8 million in Iowa and $4 million in New Hampshire, beginning Saturday.

The campaign is reserving time for the ads through each of those state’s contests, according to his campaign (it’s unclear when New Hampshire will hold its primary but it’s likely to happen Jan. 23). The massive ad buy, the details of which were shared first with POLITICO, shows that Ramaswamy is “playing to win,” said Tricia McLaughlin, his senior adviser.

“If people thought he was aggressive with events leading up to this, stay tuned for post Nov. 8,” McLaughlin told POLITICO.

Ramaswsmy is currently running fifth in both early states with roughly 4 percent of the vote.

“We're going to stop at nothing until we win,” Ramaswsmy said in New Hampshire Wednesday. “And so I think you're gonna see that pretty soon, and it's gonna ramp up and so stay posted, but it's just going to be the tip of the iceberg is what you've seen so far, in between now and January.”