Ads target Sinema, who has not said she will run for office

Some of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s biggest critics are hitting the airwaves with TV ads assailing her time in office and pushing Arizona’s Senate race to the fore, even though Sinema hasn’t actually said she is seeking reelection.

On Tuesday, Replace Sinema, a political action committee supportive of Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, launched on local TV in the Phoenix and Tucson markets casting Sinema, I-Ariz., as self-indulgent and out of touch with her constituents.

On Monday, Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake hit the airwaves with an ad on local and cable TV timed around the Iowa caucus, calling Sinema and Gallego the “enablers” who allowed President Joe Biden to forfeit gains on border security.

Both ads are a reminder that while some people still haven’t taken down their Christmas lights, political operations already want the public thinking of November.

It’s unclear how widely viewed these initial ads will be, but their January run dates make clear that Arizona’s U.S. Senate race could be one of the most fiercely contested in the country.

Sinema hasn’t publicly said whether she will seek a second six-year term, though her campaign spending throughout the past year suggests she has been all along. If Sinema does run, it offers the rare prospect of a threeway contest.

Replace Sinema isn’t waiting for her formalities.

“She is a candidate in every respect except she hasn’t declared,” said Sacha Haworth, a Replace Sinema spokesperson.

Lake is preemptively hitting Sinema while nationalizing the stakes for Arizona’s race.

“When Republicans take back the U.S. Senate, we will fix the problems caused by Joe Biden and his enablers Kyrsten Sinema and Ruben Gallego,” she said in a statement. “I will work with (former President Donald Trump) to make Arizona, and America, Safe, Affordable and Great Again.”

Gallego’s campaign defended his record on border matters.

“While Kari Lake tries to use the border crisis for political gain instead of offering real solutions, Ruben Gallego has delivered more than $93 billion in border security funding to keep Arizonans safe and hire thousands of border patrol agents,” his campaign said. “While there is more work to be done, she has rhetoric, he has a record — they are not the same.”

For her part, Sinema has been in negotiations for weeks on bipartisan border security legislation. That effort appears to have run into partisan resistance from Republicans in the House of Representatives, especially as rumored details of the Senate plan have leaked.

While Lake took aim at someone who is not formally in the race, she ignored someone who is: fellow Republican Mark Lamb, who is Pinal County sheriff.

The limited polling on Arizona’s Senate race shows an even contest between Lake and Gallego with Sinema far behind.

Replace Sinema’s latest poll, conducted by a Democratic-friendly firm, showed Gallego leading Lake by 1 point in a three-way race and Lake winning over him in a head-to-head contest.

That poll, like several others in recent months, showed Sinema about 20 percentage points behind the leader.

Republicans are optimistic about their chances of retaking the Senate in the November elections, with West Virginia, Ohio and Montana providing enough potential wins to flip control of the chamber. Arizona offers a potentially close but controversial and more complex pickup opportunity.

Democrats are buoyed by their recent success in Arizona Senate races. Beginning with Sinema’s 2018 triumph, Democrats have three straight contests in Arizona after decades of futility.

While both ads take shots at Sinema, they do so in very different ways and suggest the kind of campaign the senator faces if she runs for reelection.

Replace Sinema, formally called Change for Arizona 2024 PAC, focuses on reports of her lavish spending on dinners, hotels and private flights underwritten by her well-heeled campaign donors. It closes with the pitch: “Kyrsten Sinema sold out to live large.”

By contrast, Lake’s ad makes a policy-based attack on Biden that she blames on Sinema and Gallego.

Lake claims that “With President Trump, we had a secure border. But Joe Biden and his enablers, Kyrsten Sinema and Ruben Gallego, destroyed that security.”