Well, if we could categorize this year’s New Jersey gubernatorial as a ‘competitive’ race at the moment, I’d say this is would probably be a pretty effective move in terms of increasing her visibility and bringin’ it to Christie without coming across as too negative:

Via ABC:

The ad begins running this week and is a more than $1 million buy, a Buono campaign aide said.

The ad’s goals are two-fold: hitting her opponent on the state of the economy and introducing herself to voters where she still has low name recognition. Buono, 59, has had digital ads, including one released this week poking fun at the pronunciation of her last name, but this is the first one New Jersey residents will see in their pricey media markets of New York City and Philadelphia.

“To hear Gov. Christie tell it, everything in New Jersey is going just fine. Well I see another New Jersey with 400,000 unemployed. One of the worst jobless rates in the country. Working and middle class families have seen costs soar, from property taxes to college tuition,” Buono says in the 30 -second ad before introducing her story to New Jersey. “I know that struggle, because I lived it. My dad was an immigrant who worked as a butcher. Working my way through school, I was able to pull myself up. I’m Barbara Buono. As your governor, I’ll fight to give every New Jersey child the same chance I got.”

Unfortunately for Buono and the Democrats, however, it really isn’t a competitive race, and it would take some serious leaps and bounds to get it into that territory. Gov. Christie’s campaign has about three times the cash as Buono’s camp; he already has a couple of solid television ads circulating; his sky-high gubernatorial approval ratings are still going strong; and the last polling matchup had Christie in first place with a comfortable 34-point margin. It sounds like Buono’s camp is hoping — and it may very well be — that one of the biggest reasons for the gap is a simple lack of name recognition compared to Christe’s relative state stardom, and that introducing her to more voters will bring the state around to its more natural blueish leanings… but good luck with that, because that is one imposing popularity gap she would still have to surmount.