Former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) is up on the Granite State airwaves today with what his campaign is calling a major buy in the key early primary state.

The New Hampshire ad includes his standard stump line: "It's time for the president of the United States to ask Americans to be patriotic about something other than war."

His first ads focused on the fight over the Iraq war supplemental spending bill on Capitol Hill, and featured regular people asking Congress not to "back down" from withdrawing troops because of President Bush's veto threat.

Campaign strategist Joe Trippi told reporters on a conference call today that Edwards is making his case on television to get out of third place in New Hampshire polls.

Also, Deputy Campaign Manager Jonathan Prince said yesterday's "Haircuts and hatchet jobs" e-mail push was "one of our best fundraising emails of the entire campaign."

Both men predicted the campaign would meet its $9 million fundraising goal for the quarter, which ends Saturday, and said they were ahead of budget and able to get up the TV ads up in New Hampshire a week earlier than expected.

-- Christina Bellantoni, national political reporter, The Washington Times