(Image source from: The Rock River Times)
In the next coming week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) running a new Television advertisement painting all three Republican candidates as anti-immigration, is jumping into the Arizona Senate race.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, former Maricopa County will be the center of the ad, an immigration hard-liner pardoned earlier this year by United States President Donald Trump after he was condemned of criminal contempt.
"For years, Joe Arpaio broke the law to humiliate and terrorize Latinos and immigrants. Martha McSally and Kelli Ward have joined Arpaio's anti-immigrant bandwagon," a narrator says in the ad. "When immigrant families are attacked, the rights of all are threatened. For those seeking Arizona's Senate seat, Democrat or Republican, we have one question: Will you defend everyone's rights?"
A Spanish-language version of the ad is beside ran by ACLU. The group will spend $300,000 to air the spots on TV in Phoenix and Tucson.
In recent weeks, the new ad in Arizona follows two other TV ad campaigns and highlights the ACLU's ramped-up participation in the 2018 elections. The ACLU spent seven figures in the month of June on a nationwide ad campaign to force Trump on family separations at the border.
ACLU leaders told POLITICO in January they expected to spend upward of $25 million on this year's midterms. They've focused on voting rights, ballot initiatives and local races, including a prosecutor's race in St. Louis County next month and a local sheriff's race in North Carolina in May.
Arizona's new campaign represents the organization's initial direct participation in a Senate campaign this cycle. Over $300,000 is spent by ACLU on a canvassing endeavor in the state, along with the TV ads, according to an FEC filing earlier this week.
Faiz Shakir, ACLU's national political director said the organization's major fundraising increase since the start of the Trump administration prompted it to try to expand grass-roots efforts both in the 2018 midterms and beyond.
"We're trying to take as much of the money that we received and pour it back into increasing our power in states, with Arizona being a critical one," Shakir said.
By Sowmya Sangam
