Clinton set to launch $2 million ad campaign She’s spending big in New Hampshire and Iowa before the airwaves get cluttered.

Hillary Clinton will become the first top-tier candidate to hit the airwaves in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire starting Tuesday with a $2 million ad buy for five weeks of television commercials — a gambit intended to get out in front of her competitors and help boost her popularity before the airwaves are cluttered with competing messages from other candidates.

It’s also a show of force in Iowa, where recent polls show Clinton’s favorability numbers dropping and where Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has enjoyed surging popularity — the single ad buy is almost as large as Sanders’ total campaign spending of $3 million in the first quarter, and more than any top-tier Republican candidate has spent so far on ads.

The television spots, each 60 seconds, focus on Clinton’s mother, Dorothy Rodham, the person she says inspired her to fight for women and children, and whom she highlighted in her kickoff speech on Roosevelt Island in June.

“When I think about why I’m doing this, I think about my mother, Dorothy,” Clinton says in one spot, detailing her mother’s traumatic childhood, during which she was abandoned. Debuting a new line she has not used in her stump speech, she says: “I think about all the Dorothys, all over America who fight for their families, who never give up. That’s why I’m doing this, that’s why I’ve always done this, for all the Dorothys.” Rodham passed away in 2011.

In the second ad, Clinton also talks about her mom, before a narrator lists some of Clinton’s career milestones. It also highlights her new title: “Grandma.” Former President Bill Clinton makes two brief appearances in old snapshots featured in the ad — in his post-law school hippie-looking days, and in a photo-op the Clintons posed for at the hospital after their granddaughter, Charlotte, was born last year.

The ad buy — which will run statewide in New Hampshire and air in the Iowa markets of Des Moines and Cedar Rapids — is later in the cycle than Barack Obama went up in 2007. He started running ads in the early summer. But it’s earlier than Clinton did in her last bid, when she waited until late August to go up with her first campaign ad, an aide said.

It comes as Clinton’s favorability ratings in Iowa have sunk to 56 percent, and the majority of voters say they do not see her as honest or trustworthy. The goal of the ads is to “make sure everyone knows who Hillary Clinton really is — who she fights for and what has motivated her lifelong commitment to children and families,” campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement. “Since Day One, we’ve planned for a competitive primary with Hillary herself working to earn every vote and, ultimately, the nomination. This is the natural next step.”

On the Republican side, the top-tier candidates so far have held back on commercials, while hopefuls on the second rung, like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Ohio Gov. John Kasich (through his super PAC), have been spending big in order to stand out from the pack. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, considered a leading candidate, recently spent close to $10 million on ad buys to reserve air time beginning in November.

The only comparable spending to Clinton’s $2 million buy, so far, is Kasich’s super PAC, which is planning to spend close to $3 million in New Hampshire over the course of a month. The Clinton campaign noted that Republican candidates and their super PACS have spent or reserved $34 million in air time in the four early primary states.

Gabriel Debenedetti contributed to this report.