Arizona’s Republican establishment of wealthy businessmen formed a single-candidate super PAC, DefendArizona, to support Rep. Martha McSally’s senate bid. More about these assholes later.
The DefendArizona super PAC is out with a new attack ad against Rep. Kyrsten Sinema which crosses the line in maliciously false attack ads. There is no depths to which these scurrilous assholes will sink to smear Rep. Sinema and to support Rep. McSally.
Given the maliciously false nature of this campaign smear, Rep. McSally should publicly condemn this false attack ad and insist that DefendArizona pull it from the airwaves as not representative of the kind of campaign she wants to run – or is it?
Manu Raju, Senior Congressional Correspondent for CNN reports, Attack ad hits Arizona Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema for past comments on underage prostitution:
Democrat Kyrsten Sinema raised concerns 11 years ago about imposing tougher penalties against individuals who solicit underage prostitutes because they may appear older than their ages, according to video of her remarks reviewed by CNN.
In a February 2007 state House hearing when she was an Arizona legislator, Sinema raised concerns about a bill that toughened penalties against individuals soliciting prostitutes, saying, “I don’t think that’s fair.”
As a former social worker at an elementary school, she said there were “children at my school who were 12, 13 years old and some of these children looked older than me.”
Sinema added that she had “real concern” for individuals who solicited child prostitution and could face a class 2 felony for “unknowingly soliciting sex from a 12-year-old who appeared to be a 20-year-old.”
According to video of her remarks reviewed by CNN, Sinema did speak out against child trafficking in that hearing, and she eventually voted for an amended version of the bill after raising concerns about the measure.
Sinema’s campaign called the ad deeply misleading and said it obscured her record combating child trafficking. Campaign aides argued that Sinema has a history of seeking to stop child trafficking, pointing to several bills she worked to pass to address the matter while serving in the state Legislature.
“Kyrsten voted for this legislation to toughen penalties for child trafficking and in the same remarks this latest false attack ad misleadingly edited, she spoke out forcefully against sex trafficking,” said campaign spokeswoman Helen Hare. “Kyrsten’s first job was as a rape crisis counselor and she has dedicated her career to defending women and children from abuse and assault.”
Hare called the ad a “false attack on Kyrsten’s clear record of standing up for women and children.”