1st McSally ad for 2020 race slams Kelly over impeachment support
Arizona Sen. Martha McSally ((From Archive))
PHOENIX - Vulnerable Arizona Republican Sen. Martha McSally attacks her Democratic opponent, Mark Kelly, for supporting the impeachment removal of President Donald Trump in an ad that began airing on Wednesday.
McSally’s first television ad of the election cycle attempts to tie Kelly to liberal members of Congress and the leaders of the Democratic impeachment efforts, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff.
“The Washington liberals are obsessed with President Trump,” a narrator says in the ad. “They wasted three years and millions of dollars trying to overturn the last election and steal the next one. Liberal Mark Kelly supported their impeachment scam.”
In an unusually early start to the campaign, McSally is upping the ante on the airwaves after months of attacks against her by liberal groups that contend McSally’s support for repealing former President Barack Obama’s health care law would harm people with preexisting health conditions.
The race between Kelly and McSally is among a handful of contests that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. It’s likely to attract tens of millions of dollars in advertising from both sides.
Kelly said after the Senate impeachment trial that he would have voted to remove the president over charges of abuse of power and obstructing a congressional investigation. All Senate Democrats supported Trump’s removal, but they were outvoted by Republicans including McSally.
“Before I joined the Navy, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution – the president did as well,” Kelly said at the time. “He did not live up to that oath when he intimidated witnesses, refused to provide documents and relevant testimony to Congress, and when he attempted to use his office to influence a foreign government to aid his re-election.”
McSally said the president’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son were “inappropriate” but added that “this does not rise to anywhere near the level of throwing the president out of office or off the ballot for the first time in American history.”
McSally was appointed to the seat formerly held by the late Republican Sen. John McCain after she lost the 2018 race for Arizona’s other Senate seat to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.
“This is the same negative politics Arizonans rejected once before,” Kelly spokesman Jacob Peters said of the ad.