WASHINGTON — The Senate Republican campaign arm is targeting centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., in a new attack ad launched Monday as she continues to consider a 2024 re-election bid.
The site labels Sinema a “liberal Democrat” and ties her to President Joe Biden, a sign that the GOP remains nervous that the Democrat-turned-independent could win more votes from Arizona Republicans than Democrats if she pursues a second period.
“Sinema voted for President Biden’s agenda 100% of the time, supported Biden’s green energy bill, even helped pass Biden’s American bailout,” says one narrator.
It’s a five-figure digital ad buy that will run in Arizona, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee said.
The ad signals the GOP’s upcoming strategy to try to weaken Sinema with Arizona Republicans ahead of the key Senate race, as she continues to avoid questions about whether she will be a candidate. Sinema has a warm relationship with several GOP senators and has been praised by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as “the most effective first-term senator I have seen in my time in the Senate.”
Sinema, who was elected to the Senate in 2018 as a Democrat, left the party last December. Although Sinema votes in line with Biden 94% of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight, that statistic obscures the extent to which she has been an obstacle to the president, managing to quietly kill some of his priorities and prevent them from getting to a voice. She also forced Democrats to scale back the Inflation Reduction Act by objecting to higher corporate taxes and insisting on keeping the interest tax credit that came with it. And she voted to protect the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, along with Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., which led Republicans to filibuster a sweeping voting rights bill. She has also objected to some of Biden’s staff choices.
The NRSC ad says Arizonans “deserve a better senator” than both Sinema and the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Rep. Ruben Gallego, whom the narrator calls “the rotten one” while highlighting his divorce from his ex-wife in 2017, with whom he has a son and will remarry in 2021.
Gallego’s campaign responded in a fundraising email, accusing the NRSC of launching a “baseless, deeply personal attack ad against Ruben” and calling it “a dangerous moment” for the campaign if Democrats enable Lake to “get the edge on us “, before asking for a donation.
A spokesman for Sinema had no comment on the ad.
A recent NRSC poll of a three-way race in Arizona found Gallego leading with 41% ahead of Republican candidate and former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who had 37%, and Sinema with 17% in a distant third. The poll found Sinema draws more votes from Lake — a Donald Trump-endorsed voter denier — than Gallego if she’s in the mix.
NRSC Chairman Steve Daines, R-Mont., told NBC News in a recent interview that it is “a margin of error survey,” but argued that it makes it clear that Sinema cannot win in Arizona as an independent.
“It just goes to show that there’s a difficult path for an independent to win the election. … An independent field in Arizona consistently polls under 20%,” Daines said. “There’s not a path to win.”
David Bergstein, communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said the new ad shows the GOP is alarmed by Lake’s prospects.
“What this strategy confirms is that Kari Lake is Senate Republicans’ nightmare candidate, and she has them terrified of their chances in Arizona,” Bergstein said.
