6 sibs in ad for Dem foe
‘Our Ariz. politi-bro is a racist’
Thanksgiving with the Gosars will be mighty awkward this year.
Six of GOP Rep. Paul Gosar’s nine siblings are campaigning against him.
“Where is his integrity?” asked sis Jennifer Gosar in an ad she filmed for her brother’s Democratic opponent, David Brill. “I don’t know.”
Gosar, a four-term incumbent running for re-election in northeastern Arizona, is a vociferous supporter of President Trump and a conservative hardliner. The Republican Freedom Caucus member’s stances on immigration, health care and environmental issues have led to a family rift, siblings told the Phoenix New Times on Friday.
“None of us are doing this for publicity. None of us even want to do it,” brother David Gosar told the newspaper.
The ads came about after a Brill staffer saw David’s posts criticizing his brother on Twitter and contacted him.
“It would be difficult to see my brother as anything but a racist,” Grace Gosar declared in one of the ads for Brill.
“To speak up against my brother, it brings sadness to me,” Joan Gosar said in another ad. “I think my brother has traded a lot of the values we had at our kitchen table.”
“We’ve got to stand up for our good name,” David Gosar said in another ad. “This is not who we are.”
In addition to the ads, Joan, who lives in Idaho Falls, Idaho, donated $1,000 to Brill’s campaign, filings show.
Paul Gosar, a dentist, is the eldest sibling in his family. On his House of Representatives Web site, his biography notes that “Of the 10 kids in his family, there are seven democrats, two republicans and one independent.” Brother Pete, who ran for governor of Wyoming in 2014 as a Democrat, does not appear in the ads.
Paul Gosar shrugged off his siblings’ criticism in a series of tweets Saturday afternoon, noting that none of the them live in Arizona.
“My siblings who chose to film ads against me are all liberal Democrats who hate President Trump. These disgruntled Hillary suppporters [sic] are related by blood to me but like leftists everywhere, they put political ideology before family. Stalin would be proud.”
“You can’t pick your family,” he wrote in another tweet. “We all have crazy aunts and relatives etc and my family is no different. I hope they find peace in their hearts and let go all the hate.
“To the six angry Democrat Gosars — see you at Mom and Dad’s house!”
While the ads generated buzz, they may not make much of a dent in November’s vote totals. Arizona’s ruby-red 4th Congressional District, which handed Gosar a landslide victory in 2016 with 71 percent of the vote, is seen as one of the GOP’s leastflippable districts. Additional reporting by Eileen AJ Connelly