Arizona Ads Show Way to Stop “Schumer-Soros Smear Machine” in Final Weeks

“Please steal our TV spot” is the startling plea to GOP U.S. Senate candidates from a Super PAC leader whose group this week launched TV and radio ads in the Arizona Senate race that criticizes Democrat candidate Ruben Gallego for his “dark money alliance and corrupt political bargain” with a “Schumer-Soros smear machine” that the group claims is sponsoring millions in attack ads against Gallego’s Republican opponent, Kari Lake, so that “extremist liberal Gallego” can become the “puppet senator” of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and “anti-American billionaire George Soros.”

Calling out the Arizona media for giving Gallego a “free ride,” the ad features a stark screenshot of the front page of the state’s main paper—The Arizona Republic—and demands journalists press Gallego on his far-left voting record in Congress and his refusal to disavow Schumer and Soros as well as his “record of anti-Catholic bigotry.”

“Running against a left-winger like Gallego, Kari Lake should be running away with this race,” said George Landrith, leader of the Frontiers of Freedom Action PAC (which is running the media spots) in a press release. “She has great TV presence, and in the 2022 governor’s race, she won about 49.7% of the vote despite being heavily outspent and facing the usual sudden malfunctioning of voting machines in Republican areas of Maricopa County.”

“But Schumer and Soros are putting up a huge smokescreen by bombarding the airwaves with anti-Lake ads about abortion to hide Gallego’s real record in Congress.”

Landrith suggested this was letting Gallego run as a “Kyrsten Sinema moderate,” in reference to the incumbent Arizona Democrat who decided to drop out.

The anti-Gallego ad features a yellow banner stating “Gallego is no Sinema,” as part of what Landrith described as getting past the Democrat Party’s attempt to hide who Gallego is.

“People tend to vote for incumbents because they have names they know, but put a left-wing Democrat’s voting record on the screen along with pictures of Schumer and Soros and make reference to the Democrat Party’s anti-Catholic bigotry, and then the polling numbers change,” he said, citing a poll that shows the race is within the margin of error.

Even if Democrats had wanted to vote more moderately or the way their constituents would have wanted, they didn’t dare because the left-wing leadership of the party is holding them hostage. People like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her gang of five and the left-wing billionaires behind them say, ‘Vote left-wing or we’ll primary you.’ Trump was right to call this ‘the corrupt bargain’ that Democrats have to make with the left against the wishes of their constituents.

“Take Gallego,” Landrith continued. “He has a voting record no different from Ocasio-Cortez and the ‘Gang of Five’ radicals in Congress.”

The Arizona situation is similar to that of almost every GOP candidate running against the huge money advantage, Landrith said.

“We hope they will steal our ad because it’s modular. All they have to do is put in the right names,” Landrith said.

“It just comes down to using the ‘L’ word for liberal and the ‘E’ word for extremist, then demanding the state media ask the Democrat candidate to disavow his extremist supporters.”

Arguing that Democrats did this in 2022 to stop the expected Republican blowout at the ballot box, Landrith noted: “This is just what they did in 2022 to stop the Red Wave.”

Landrith cited a post-2022 study by James Campbell, a professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, explaining how Democrats created a “breakwater” against Republicans in key states by leveraging mail-in ballots, mobilizing voters, and injecting huge amounts of ad money in the final weeks. This flood of money was used to launch a firestorm of attack ads against GOP candidates.

“Too many Republicans, on the advice of consultants and under pressure from family and friends to show what nice people they are, respond with ineffective defensive ads, either portraying themselves as ‘nice people’ who make breakfast and walk the dog, or focusing on obscure feel-good issue,” Landrith said.

“As a result, key races became more about Republican challengers’ reputations than about the radical voting records of Democrat incumbents.”

The anti-Gallego ad addresses this by asking:

“Why won’t he disavow America hater Soros’s lawless prosecutors that led to the wounding or death of police officers and shattered so many innocent lives?”

“Why won’t he disavow extremist liberal Schumer’s threats against the Supreme Court and voter ID?”

Another section of the ad, featuring fiery imagery, raises the issue of Gallego’s record of anti-Catholic bigotry, as outlined in a series of English and Spanish-language ads the group has been running during major broadcast news hours. These ads, which began three weeks ago, are credited with sparking a wave of media stories about the anti-Catholic issues taken up by Newt Gingrich (notably on Larry Kudlow’s show), Donald Trump’s article in Politico, and the New York Post about how the Catholic issue is costing Democrats—fueled further by the controversy surrounding the Al Smith dinner.

Landrith praised some GOP Senate candidates like Eric Hovde of Wisconsin for how they have handled the usual Schumer-Soros attacks. Hovde has put out an ad satirizing the attacks against him that has drawn laughs across the political spectrum. So too, Senate candidates Bernie Moreno in Ohio and Tim Sheehy in Montana have done hard-hitting ads citing the extremist left records of their opponents.

“In 1980, Super PAC ads were key to delivering 12 new Republican senators to Ronald Reagan, and all they did was use the word ‘liberal,’” Landrith said. “Once people realize all the attack ads against GOP candidates are just smokescreens to hide the fact Democrats are left-wing extremists, it’s the difference maker.”

Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.