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Democrats are confronting a blitz of attack ads in South Texas as Republicans make good on their promise to seriously contest three congressional seats there.
Since Labor Day, outdoors GOP teams have blasted the Democratic nominees on a number of fronts, criticizing all of them as weak on border points after which zeroing in on candidate-specific vulnerabilities. Democratic teams are countering in two of the races, although for now, it’s Republicans who seem like in a extra offensive posture.
The quantity and tenor of the ads usually are not totally stunning for a trio of nationally focused congressional races with lower than two months to go. But it’s a new expertise for South Texas, lengthy a Democratic stronghold, and a reminder of how badly Republicans need to achieve new floor within the area after President Joe Biden underperformed there in 2020.
The attack ads are flying within the fifteenth, twenty eighth and thirty fourth congressional districts, which embrace the Harlingen, Corpus Christi, Laredo and San Antonio media markets. In the fifteenth District, Republican Monica De La Cruz and Democrat Michelle Vallejo are competing for an open seat. The present incumbent within the fifteenth District — Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen — is working for reelection within the neighboring 34th District due to redistricting. Gonzalez’s opponent is U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores, R-Los Indios, who won a June special election for the 34th. And within the twenty eighth District, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, faces a GOP challenger in Cassy Garcia.
The fifteenth District is extensively thought-about the most certainly to finish up in GOP fingers, and Republicans have pushed particularly exhausting on TV to outline Vallejo as a radical liberal. Two GOP outfits, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Congressional Leadership Fund, have already aired at the least 4 anti-Vallejo ads, whereas Democrats haven’t but launched any commercials criticizing De La Cruz but.
“The [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] is committed to winning all three South Texas races, and we’re currently on air in the Rio Grande Valley as part of that effort,” DCCC spokesperson Monica Robinson stated in an announcement.
For instance, the DCCC helps fund a pro-Gonzalez advert purchase within the thirty fourth District. It just isn’t uncommon for such teams to prioritize incumbents over open seats, and so they have future advert reservations that could possibly be used for the fifteenth District.
On Thursday, Vallejo is ready to launch her first TV ad focusing on De La Cruz, branding her “too extreme” on abortion.
fifteenth Congressional District
Vallejo ran as a proud progressive in her major, and now Republicans are working to make her pay for it. One NRCC industrial warns she is a “different kind of Democrat,” citing her support for ending cash bail, amongst different issues. Another calls her “pure radical.”
The anti-Vallejo spots have additionally been extra private. One CLF ad accuses her of “hosting a border resistance event at her family business,” full with “anarchist artwork” and “calls to “smash ICE,” or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Vallejo’s marketing campaign issued a news launch responding to the advert, saying it falsely “weaponizes community events that were hosted at her family’s flea market,” which it repeatedly rents out. The marketing campaign distanced itself from the art work and anti-ICE rhetoric, saying the advert “highlights pieces of art from” a 2019 Catholic charity fundraiser “that Vallejo does not endorse nor has any connection to whatsoever.”
The newest NRCC advert options anti-Vallejo testimonials from three South Texans, together with a person named Sean from Karnes County. He is a neighborhood actual property dealer, Sean O’Brien, with a historical past of bombastic Facebook posts, together with one after President Donald Trump’s reelection loss that instructed the U.S. Supreme Court ought to “throw out this bogus election.”
“These are not the values of South Texas, and if the NRCC is looking for extremism, all they have to do is look in the mirror,” a Vallejo spokesperson, Alejandro Garcia, stated in an announcement.
Vallejo’s first TV advert in opposition to De La Cruz is notable as a result of each events have largely steered away from abortion of their ads thus far. The Vallejo spot cites De La Cruz’s assist for overturning Roe v. Wade, as properly her opposition to all abortion besides to avoid wasting the lifetime of the mom.
twenty eighth Congressional District
In the twenty eighth District, Republicans are up in opposition to one of the crucial average House Democrats in Cuellar, who makes for a tougher ideological distinction. Instead, they’ve prioritized assaults that say he has change into too cozy in Washington, with one CLF commercial detailing his “luxury D.C. condo.” Another says he “forgets” South Texas in D.C.
“Congressman Cuellar has spent his career fighting for South Texas and cracking down on fraud in government,” Cuellar spokesperson Jake Hocberg stated in an announcement. “Just this Congress he supported HR 1 — the largest anti-corruption and elections reform bill since Watergate – he voted to prevent political patronage and supported the Stock Act to stop insider trading by members of Congress.
Republicans have also sought to turn an asset for him in his hotly contested primary — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s endorsement — into a liability for November. At least two ads show him boasting at a primary runoff rally that “Pelosi endorsed me.”
On the Democratic aspect, one ad from House Majority PAC has been particularly controversial. Among different claims, it fees that Garcia’s “Washington allies support a plan that would gut Medicare and Social Security,” showing to quote a New York Times article about Florida U.S. Sen. Rick Scott’s “Plan to Rescue America.” The plan, which has divided Republicans in Washington, requires sunsetting all laws after 5 years, an concept that critics word would prolong to entitlements.
Garcia’s marketing campaign despatched a cease-and-desist letter to TV stations asking them to take down the industrial, saying there isn’t a proof she helps Scott’s plan or that they’re allies. “In fact, Garcia has never even spoken to Scott, let alone endorsed Scott’s plan,” Garcia’s marketing campaign lawyer, Eric Wang, wrote within the letter.
thirty fourth Congressional District
Republicans are hammering Gonzalez for his previous as a distinguished South Texas legal professional. His marketing campaign maintains his purchasers have been principally “working families who were wronged by big insurance and corporations.”
But Republicans zeroed in on one 2006 case the place he defended Marin Martinez-Hernandez, who was convicted of illegally transporting undocumented migrants throughout state strains. The advert claimed Gonzalez “made a living working for people charged with human smuggling” and insinuated he had made his fortune as a result of he “profited off tragedy.”
Gonzalez’s marketing campaign referred to as the characterization an “absurd and desperate lie” and that he was by no means a prison lawyer. Rather, “he was assigned several cases by federal judges who asked him to serve the community as a defense attorney.” It was widespread observe in McAllen and Brownsville on the time for non-criminal protection attorneys to be appointed by federal judges to work at an hourly charge beneath a observe often called “managed assigned counsel.”
Democrats, alternatively, have attacked Flores for the voting file of her allies in Congress (she has been in workplace for under about three months and has not been in a position to construct a substantive legislative file). Dubbing her an “interesada,” a House Majority PAC advert insinuated she is self-interested and tied her to Republicans who advocated privatizing Social Security and company tax cuts.
Her marketing campaign merely brushed the advert off.
“If these lies are the best they got, buena suerte,” marketing campaign supervisor Tyler Zanazzi stated in an announcement.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ political arm can also be on the air in opposition to Flores, highlighting her vote in opposition to the bipartisan gun invoice that she opposed after the Uvalde taking pictures. The advert, which exhibits a photograph of Flores proudly clutching an assault rifle, notes the laws was negotiated by the state’s senior senator, John Cornyn. She stated she voted in opposition to it as a result of it didn’t embrace sufficient faculty security funding.
Matthew Choi and Alexa Ura contributed to this story.
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