We already knew Michael Bloomberg was shelling out $10 million of his own money to buy a Super Bowl ad. On Thursday, the 2020 candidate unveiled the 60-second spot in advance, and its focus is on gun violence. (Watch it here.) The ad features Calandrian Simpson Kemp, whose 20-year-old son was shot and killed in 2013. Bloomberg, she said, "heard mothers crying, so he started fighting." The Texas woman is a member of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which merged in 2013 with Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns to create Everytown for Gun Safety, reports CBS News. The new ad does not mention President Trump, whose campaign also has bought $10 million worth of time during Sunday's broadcast.
"Lives are being lost every day," says Simpson Kemp in the ad. "It is a national crisis." She tells the AP that she first met Bloomberg in 2015 and liked that he made gun violence a signature issue. Among other things, he spent more than $100 million in 2018 backing midterm candidates aligned on the issue. Bloomberg gave Simpson Kemp a ticket to Sunday's game, and she notes to the AP that her son, George Kemp, dreamed of playing in the NFL. "When I walk into that stadium and sit in that seat," she said she will be able to "tell my son that he made it. Indirectly, he has made it." (Another Super Bowl ad features a dog and isn't selling anything.)