Another gift from Garcia to Ducey

‘Just imagine, no wall’ is made for GOP attack ad

David Garcia served up another heaping helping of red meat to Gov. Doug Ducey over the weekend.

During a speech to the Netroots Nation in New Orleans, the Democratic candidate for governor made what could be interpreted as a call for an open border between the U.S. and Mexico.

“Just imagine, no wall. No wall in southern Arizona,” he told the annual convention of cheering progressive Democrats.

This, just a few weeks after he took aim at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Garcia told me on Wednesday that he wasn’t calling for an open border with Mexico or suggesting that existing barriers be taken down.

“I was talking about what everybody is talking about when you mention the wall. (President Donald) Trump’s wall,” Garcia said. “If you look at the context, this is clearly about Trump’s wall.”

If it was clearly about Trump’s wall, then what’s to imagine? We don’t have it now (and I’m guessing we never will).

Regardless of what Garcia intended, look for the sound bite to star in a Republican attack ad inevitably headed your way. This, at a time when Garcia should be talking about Ducey’s weak spot: public education.

The “just imagine, no wall” comment — and the trip to New Orleans to speak at a convention of liberals on the first weekend of early voting in Arizona — has some Democratic activists privately scratching their heads.

“He’s not running a campaign designed to capture that purely centrist independent or moderate voter who is frustrated with the leadership,” one strategist told me. “This campaign feels more based on the campaign of that New York candidate.”

That would be 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who upset longtime Rep. Joseph Crowley in New York’s Democratic primary after advocating that ICE be abolished. (This, in addition to calling for universal Medicare, free college tuition and a federal guarantee of a job.)

Garcia also has proposed free community college, and he recently called for dismantling ICE and replacing it “with an immigration system that reflects our American values.”

Garcia is in an interesting spot. Republicans are clearly terrified of him, and the Republican Governors Association already has spent $8.2 million on an independent campaign opposing him. Despite a funding disadvantage,

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he’s running a thus-far-competitive campaign against a Republican incumbent in a state where Republicans control every statewide office and both chambers of the Legislature.

There’s a reason the party’s biggest rising star and its best hope of snagging a U.S. Senate seat in three decades is Kyrsten Sinema. I’m guessing you won’t catch her on video imagining anything other than that which would attract votes from moderate Republican women.