U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., is making his personal contact with constituents the highlight of the first advertisement of his 2016 re-election campaign in a television ad set to air during the Alabama-Michigan State game Thursday night.

Titled “Sixty Seven,” the ad points out that Alabama’s senior senator makes visits to all 67 counties every year. Only one of Shelby’s senate colleagues accomplishes a similar feat.

“Richard Shelby holds real, face-to-face meetings in all of Alabama’s 67 counties each year — not just at election time,” a male voiceover says against video of Shelby shaking hands with people and hunting. “He knows the back roads, the quickest routes. His home’s here. He’s here when we need him. Richard stands up for us, stands up to Obama every single day.”

The ad, which features a number of Alabama landscapes, also portrays Shelby as “pushing good, conservative Alabama values” and standing up to President Barack Obama.

The Shelby campaign reserved $6 million worth of air time that includes tomorrow’s Cotton Bowl, which will feature the 60-second ad and a shortened 30-second version.

Shelby is facing four Republican challengers in the March 1 primary. Only one of his rivals, former Marine Capt. Jonathan McConnell, has a campaign commercial.

McConnell’s radio ad, which hit airwaves earlier this month, highlights his combat and small business experience while hitting Shelby as a “career politician,” alluding to the senator’s five terms in the Senate.

“America’s in crisis, but Washington’s career politicians only know how to protect themselves. As your senator, I’ll focus on protecting you and your family,” McConnell says in the ad.

Here’s the full transcript of Shelby’s first television ad of 2016:

“Some men go to Washington and become Wash. And some men just go there to work. Richard Shelby works up there each week, pushing good conservative Alabama values: A balanced budget amendment, helping our veterans, fighting against Obama’s short-sighted defense cuts, fighting illegal immigration and Obama’s amnesty. Then when the voting’s done, he hightails it back home and hits the road here. Listening, working, helping — it’s what his life’s about.

“Richard Shelby holds real, face-to-face meetings in all of Alabama’s 67 counties each year — not just at election time. He knows the back roads, the quickest routes. His home’s here. He’s here when we need him. Richard stands up for us, stands up to Obama every single day.”

Read the original story at AL.com.

(This video is no longer available on YouTube.)

It dropped like a bomb on the Alabama political landscape, exploded across the Internet and raised a national ruckus over a governor’s race that until now had scarcely drawn a yawn from many state voters.

All in a day’s work for Fred Davis, the Hollywood guru behind Tim James’ “Language” advertisement, which has been viewed more than 1.2 million times — and counting — on YouTube, AOL and Yahoo Web sites.

“One can always hope, and for sure I knew there could be some controversy, but you never expect this,” said Davis, the creative consultant who wrote and produced the ad.

The 30-second spot features James saying that, as governor, he’d end the state’s practice of offering driver’s license exams in more than a dozen languages.

“This is Alabama. We speak English. If you want to live here, learn it,” James says in his Alabama drawl. “We’re only giving that test in English, if I’m governor.”

The ad is one of a series in James’ “Common Sense” campaign theme, and was launched on TV networks statewide April 19. The fireworks arrived immediately.

It was panned in The Guardian newspaper of London, blasted by talk show host Rachel Maddow and ripped in an editorial by The New York Times, which labeled James as “the candidate from Xenophobia.”

“The ethnic coding in the ad is unmistakable, especially because it’s not the type of thing that voters in Alabama would care about unless someone deigned to bring it to their attention,” wrote Marc Ambinder, political editor for The Atlantic magazine.

“We’re getting criticized by all the right people,” responded Davis, a Tulsa native who runs Strategic Perception Inc. from an office in the Hollywood Hills. “People are noticing. That’s exactly what we intended.”

James was grilled about the ad during an interview Thursday on “The O’Reilly Factor,” a Fox News political talk show.

“The question in political terms is, are you pandering to anti-immigrant sentiments in order to try to advance what’s been a very faltering campaign?” asked guest host Juan Williams.

“What’s happening here is we’ve just made a common sense point, and I have come under attack from the far, far left,” James replied. “This is nothing more than political correctness gone amuck.”

That same day, James was mocked by CNN’s Rick Sanchez and Alabama’s own Paul Finebaum. But the ads, he said, ignited his campaign.

James, a Greenville businessman and the son of former Gov. Fob James, has lagged behind Republican rivals Bradley Byrne and Roy Moore in a variety of polls over the past few months. But with less than a month until the June 1 primary, several experts now view the contest as a tight, three-way race that could be headed for a runoff.

“Can you feel it turning?” an energized James said in a recent stump speech in Mobile. “A year ago they didn’t give us a chance. Look at us now.”

Timing played a part. The language ad coincided with a national outcry over immigration in Arizona, where Gov. Jan Brewer last week signed a new law criminalizing illegal immigration by defining it as trespassing.

But Davis, described by Time magazine as a “viral video mastermind,” said the James ad was conceived long before the Arizona controversy. The campaign conducted surveys in 2008 to identify issues of concern to Alabama voters.

“We came up with a list of about 25 complaints, and we gave that to Tim and said, ‘Tell us what you’d do to solve these problems,'” Davis said. “What you see in the ad is basically what he told us.”

A previous ad shows James lambasting trial lawyers; the next installment, scheduled to hit state airwaves on Monday, takes on pedophiles.

The ads may be unorthodox, but they’re tame compared to some of Davis’ other recent work.