The new ad spending is the first indication of where Gary Johnson is hoping to compete in the coming weeks. | Getty Libertarian candidate Johnson focuses on battleground states in ad blitz

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s campaign is spending nearly $1 million on advertising in four battleground states, plus Oregon, Utah and his home state of New Mexico, as part of a new advertising blitz.

The new ad spending is the first indication of where Johnson is hoping to compete in the coming weeks. The former New Mexico governor’s campaign is spending $806,195 this month on radio ads in Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wisconsin, according to a media buying source.


The campaign also is spending money on digital billboards as part of its advertising push, said Johnson campaign spokesman Joe Hunter. Additional advertising is expected through Labor Day, bringing the total spending to at least $1 million, he said.

One of the ads features Johnson arguing that “if a Democrat is elected president, if a Republican is elected president, in four years we will still be at war, America will be four years deeper in debt, we will have four more years of rising taxes.”

A second ad is Johnson arguing against a two-party system.

“Google me, 60 percent of you have said you want another choice in 2016 and now you have one in me,” Johnson says in the ad. “We the people have a chance to do something in 2016 that may not come again in our lifetime. We have a legitimate chance to elect one of our own to the highest office in the land.”

The third ad features Juan Hernandez, an expert on trade policy and economics who’s served as an adviser to Sen. John McCain, former Mexico President Vicente Fox and former President George W. Bush.

That radio ad will air in Hispanic markets, Hunter said.

“I’ve always considered myself a Republican, but this year I’ve decided to support Gary Johnson for president,” Hernandez says. “As a Latino, I’m tired of the insults coming from [Donald] Trump, and I can no longer believe that this the promises of the left will be kept.”

Hernandez goes on to highlight Johnson’s immigration plan. “It’s a reform that doesn’t unrealistically talk about deporting 11 million people and doesn’t separate families,” he said. “Oh, and it doesn’t build a wall.”