This photo of an ad that said Kari Lake was soft on border issues was submitted in a complaint by an attorney with the Lake campaign to the Clean Elections Office in June.
By Richard Ruelas || The Arizona Republic
An ad that accused Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake of supporting open borders was political and subject to the state’s campaign finance laws, according to a preliminary ruling by the executive director of the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission.
The ruling issued Monday by Thomas Collins, the executive director of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, dismissed arguments by Freedoms Future Fund — the non-profit that produced the ad — that it was educational, not political.
Freedoms Future Fund said in a letter to the Clean Elections Commission that it wanted to make viewers aware of Lake’s positions, not because she was a Republican candidate for governor, but because she was a former television anchor.
If the commission votes to adopt the recommendation of its executive director, Freedoms Future Fund must file campaign finance reports disclosing its donors. It would face civil penalties if it failed to do so. The commission could also authorize Collins, as executive director, to subpoena documents related to the funding for the ad.
Lake has made tough border policy a centerpiece of her campaign for governor. She has called for bombing tunnels used by smugglers, using computer-aided special effects to illustrate an imagined detonation in one of her campaign ads.
But the ad by Freedoms Future Fund argued she was soft on the border because she donated money to Democratic President Barack Obama and didn’t do the same for Republican President Donald Trump
