Arizona Republican Kari Lake’s U.S. Senate campaign released an ad Friday hammering her opponent, Rep. Reuben Gallego (D-AZ), and Vice President Kamala Harris over their progressive policy positions on the U.S. southern border.
The ad, “Ruben and Kamala: Bad for America,” marks the fourth installment of a joint $10 million ad buy with the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), Lake’s campaign announced in an emailed release. That followed the initial report of the ad from Fox News’s Julia Johnson.
This is the latest example of down-ballot Republicans tying their opponents to Harris and her deep record of far-left policy positions. Meanwhile, Democrats, like Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Suzan Delbene (D-WA), are working to distance themselves from Harris. The trends indicate that the newly-minted Democrat nominee, who did not secure a vote in the Democrat primary, is imperiling the bids of down-ballot Democrats.
Lake’s ad begins by highlighting Gallego’s record of voting with President Joe Biden and “border czar Kamala, including their radical border agenda” 100 percent of the time during the first half of Biden’s term.
FiveThirtyEight’s data shows that while serving in the 117th Congress from 2021-2023, Gallego voted with Biden 100 percent of the time. Beginning with the 118th Congress, FiveThirtyEight stopped tracking the data.
The ad then highlights Harris’s position during the 2019 Democrat primary of decriminalizing illegal immigration.
The ad shows Harris saying, “We’re not going to treat people who cross the border as criminals.” It also highlights her saying, “We need to probably think about starting from scratch,” when asked whether she agreed with abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2018.
It also shows clips of Gallego bashing the idea of a southern border wall.
In one segment, he says, “We’re not going to support a border wall that is not needed.”
“Trump’s stupid, dumb border wall,” he says in another clip.
In a statement shared in the release, the former Fox 10 Phoenix news anchor ripped both Gallego and Harris.
“Radical Ruben Gallego has a long record of supporting open-borders policies and voting against efforts to secure our border,” she said.
“He supported Joe Biden and his border czar Kamala Harris as they created this national security & humanitarian crisis. Ruben and Kamala are bad for the border, bad for Arizona and bad for America,” Lake added.