Mitt Romney's presidential campaign on Friday released a Spanish-language ad targeting President Obama over rising tuition costs and student loan debt.
The ad opens with footage of the president in 2008 pledging a "historic commitment to education." But the ad quickly transitions to an attack on college affordability during the president's first term.
"Four years ago, Hispanics hoped Democrats would get an ‘A’ in improving our education," a narrator says. “The reality is that more than 75 percent of the population thinks that college is not affordable. Tuition costs have increased 25 percent under Obama and the Democrats, and total student debt has reached a trillion dollars.”
The video then transitions to a clip of Obama saying he wants to be held accountable on education.
“When it comes to education, Obama and the Democrats have failed our kids," the narrator says, before presenting Obama with an "F" grade.
The Romney campaign did not say where the television ad would air, or how much money it planned to put behind the buy. But Romney has more aggressively targeted Latino voters in the past week, granting interviews to both Univision and Telemundo and appearing at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on Monday.
While Romney said at that event the GOP was the "rightful home" for Hispanic voters, polls suggest he has not yet made that sale. A poll released Monday by Latino Decisions found the candidate pulling just 26 percent of Hispanic voters and trailing President Obama by 42 percentage points among the cohort.
Romney has similarly struggled to reach young voters, the other intended audience of the ad. According to a poll from the National Journal released Friday, Obama leads Romney 63-27 percent among voters ages 18 to 29.
