Arizona Republican Kali Lake’s U.S. Senate campaign released an ad on Friday attacking her opponents, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Vice President Kamala Harris, for their progressive policy positions on the U.S. southern border.
The ad, “Ruben & Kamala: Bad for America,” is the fourth installment of a joint $10 million ad buy with the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), Lake’s campaign said in an emailed statement. continue The ad was first reported by Fox News’ Julia Johnson.
This is the latest example of lower-ranking Republican candidates associating themselves with Harris and her long record of far-left policies, while Democrats such as House Democratic Campaign Committee Chair Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) have sought to distance themselves from Harris. This trend shows that new Democratic candidates who fail to win votes in Democratic primaries are endangering the candidacies of lower-ranking Democrats.
Lake’s ad begins by highlighting Gallego’s record of voting 100% with President Joe Biden and Border Commissioner Kamala, including their radical border policies, during the first half of Biden’s term.
FiveThirtyEight data show Gallego always voted for Biden while he served in the 117th Congress, from 2021 to 2023. After the 118th Congress, FiveThirtyEight stopped tracking the data.
The ad also highlights Harris’s stance on decriminalizing illegal immigration during the 2019 Democratic primary.
“I’m not going to criminalize people who cross the border,” the ad shows Harris saying, and highlights her response in 2018 to a question about whether she supported abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), saying, “Maybe we need to think about starting from scratch.”
The video also shows Gallego criticizing the idea of a wall on the southern border.
At one point he said, “I’m not going to support a border wall that we don’t need.”
“Trump’s stupid, idiotic border wall,” he says in another video.
In a statement shared in a press release, the former Fox 10 Phoenix news anchor slammed both Gallego and Harris.
“Extremist Ruben Gallego has a long history of supporting open border policies and voting against border security efforts,” she said.
“He endorsed Joe Biden and border chief Kamala Harris and they have created a national security and humanitarian crisis. Reuben and Kamala are bad for the border, bad for Arizona and bad for America,” Lake added.
