The Arizona Democrats tried to pull a fast one on some voters to help Rep. Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-AZ) re-election chances.
The party has been mailing out campaign fliers focusing on Libertarian Powell Gammill. The goal was to move votes away from Sinema’s main challenger, Republican Wendy Rogers.
The fliers don’t explicitly endorse Gammill but they do include facts that would appeal to Republican voters and not Democrats. One side of the fliers reads:
Powell Gammill, Before you vote
ELIMINATE ALL FOREIGN AID TO ANY COUNTRY
Powell doesn’t believe in foreign aid. He believes other countries need to handle their own affairs and let Americans worry about America.
ELIMINATE ALL GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR ABORTION
Powell doesn’t believe government should be in the business of abortion. If he had his way, not a single cent of government money would go to fund an abortion for any reason.
ELIMINATE ALL GUN CONTROL LAWS
Powell believes in the Second Amendment and opposes ANY violation of it. He believes EVERY citizen should be allowed to possess military-grade firearms as a defense against government tyranny.
TPM made repeated requests for comment on Wednesday from the Arizona Democratic Party but Arizona Democratic Party communications director Barbara Lubin did not return calls or emails.
The campaign for Sinema (pictured) also referred TPM to the Democratic Party.
Arizona Democratic Party executive director DJ Quinlan, in an interview with the Arizona Republic published Wednesday night, said the mailers aren’t deceptive.
“It might be unconventional, sure, but deceptive it’s surely not,” Quinlan told the Arizona newspaper. “It says right there: ‘Paid for by the Arizona Democratic Party.'”
Quinlan added that the flier was just highlighting Gammill’s positions.
“Obviously we prefer Kyrsten Sinema,” Quinlan said, before cautioning that “our calculation is there are probably a lot of conservative voters who realize [Gammill] is far more consistent than Wendy Rogers. …We’re pretty much taking [Gammill’s] positions directly from his website and sharing them.”
Gammill is a perennial congressional candidate. He ran for office in 2012 and got 17,000 votes. Sinema won the race that year by almost 10,000 votes, according to the Arizona Republic.
Both RealClearPolitics and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball rates the race for Arizona’s 9th Congressional District as Likely Dem.
Below is the flier, obtained by TPM, below:
