By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Mirror
The Arizona Democratic Party is spending heavily on television ads to help Katie Hobbs in the race for secretary of state, but hasn’t made a similar investment in gubernatorial nominee David Garcia.
The party has reserved about $1.8 million worth of network television airtime in the Phoenix and Tucson media markets through Election Day for a coordinated advertising campaign with Hobbs, according to online records available from the Federal Communications Commission.
One Democratic Party ad touts Hobbs, a state senator who has served in the Legislature since 2011, as a leader in the fight for higher teacher salaries and in helping to end the eight-day teachers’ strike in late April and early May that galvanized the #RedForEd movement. And it hits businessman Steve Gaynor, the Republican nominee, for a 2014 settlement in which paid $134,000 after employees at his Ontario, Calif. printing plant filed a class action lawsuit alleging that he underpaid them for overtime work. In another ad, Hobbs speaks about her time as a social worker and her record in the Senate on teacher pay and in clearing the state’s backlog of untested rape kits from sexual assault cases. A disclaimer on the ads states that they are paid for by the party and authorized by Hobbs.
As of August 11, which was the end of the last reporting period, the Arizona Democratic Party only had about $207,000 on hand. It reported raising about $1.7 million since the 2016 election. A party spokesman didn’t respond to questions from the Arizona Mirror about where the money for the pro-Hobbs ads came from.
