Senate candidate Ruben Gallego hits TV screens with 'Lucky Lima' and $1 million ad buy

U.S. Senate candidate Ruben Gallego debuted a new 60-second ad on Tuesday that is slated to run on local and cable TV channels in Arizona for weeks at a cost of more than $1 million.

It is the kind of advertising play that suggests Gallego ads will be a fixture on Arizona screens from now through the November election.

The ad, titled “Lucky Lima” in a reference to his service in the Iraq War, is largely biographical. The five-term member of Congress is well known in his district and a frequent guest on cable news but still relatively unknown to many Arizona voters.

Gallego, D-Ariz., is running for the Senate seat currently held by U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., who said last week she would not seek a second term.

Former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb are vying for the Republican nomination.

Lake’s campaign briefly ran an ad on local and cable TV in January timed around the Iowa caucus that blamed Sinema and Gallego for enabling President Joe Biden to forfeit what it described as gains on border policy under former President Donald Trump.

Gallego’s ad plays up the experience he had in a Marine Corps company that sustained perhaps the highest death toll for any U.S. unit since the Vietnam War. It was part of a consistent life story, Gallego says in the ad.

“I’ve always had to work hard. I learned that from my mom, an immigrant, who raised us alone on a secretary’s pay. It’s why growing up I was a line cook, a janitor — whatever it took. It’s how I got into Harvard, with no money or connections, and survived the memories of war so I can be a good dad.”

Lake may take issue with the last portion. She has already regularly assailed Gallego for leaving his first wife, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, when she was in the final weeks of pregnancy with their son.

A conservative news organization in Washington, D.C., has filed legal papers seeking a court order to unseal their divorce records. The former couple jointly sealed their records and Kate Gallego has endorsed Ruben Gallego for the Senate.

The Lake campaign said Gallego’s early ad buy comes because he is losing the race. Different polls have generally shown small leads for both candidates in recent months with uncertainty over whether Sinema would run.

“Radical Ruben Gallego is frantic spending this early and running to (Senate Majority Leader) Chuck Schumer for help because he knows his poll numbers are tanking against Kari Lake,” a Lake spokesperson said. “Voters in Arizona won’t be fooled: Ruben is a Far Left Socialist who votes with Biden 100 percent of the time. He supported all the reckless spending that led to high prices and inflation and voted repeatedly against President Trump’s border wall. He’s toast.”

A spokesperson for the Lamb campaign said the sheriff isn’t looking past the GOP contest at the moment.

“We have our sights laser focused on the Republican primary. Sheriff Lamb looks forward to taking the fight to Ruben Gallego on closing our border and families being destroyed by an economy that doesn’t work.”

Gallego brings in $1 million, endorsements after Sinema opts out

Gallego, who doesn’t note in the ad that he is a Democrat, also says in the ad that he taken on “politicians on both sides” during his career in Congress. Perhaps the Democrat he battled most was Sinema before she quit the party in December 2022. His criticism then was that she was insufficiently in step with the party’s agenda.

The ad buy reflects a measure of financial optimism for Gallego that his campaign can expect to sustain its presence on screens for months to come.

His campaign said that in the first 24 hours after Sinema quit the race it raised more than $1 million. Lake’s campaign said it raised $330,000 at a fundraiser in Washington in that period with at least 20 sitting senators.

Gallego also added the endorsement of U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., after Sinema’s exit. Kelly is a prolific fundraiser and said last week that he is encouraging his supporters to help defeat Lake, whom he casts as a threat to democracy itself.

Among non-incumbents in the seven Senate races nationally that are expected to be competitive this year, Gallego had the most cash entering January, $6.5 million, and raised the second-most in the latest three-month reporting period, $3.3 million.

Lake, who only joined the race in October, had about $1 million in cash in the same period and $308,000 in debt. That puts her in the bottom half of non-incumbents in competitive races for cash.

With just $256,000, Lamb had the lowest cash reserves in competitive Senate races.

Ad likely marks the start of a sustained TV campaign

Gallego’s early ad spending suggests the race could become more publicly visible on Arizona screens for months to come.

That was the case in 2018.

That year Sinema began a sustained TV ad campaign in April. It was seen as a key opening shot in a battle that her eventual Republican rival, then-Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., could not match because she was still mired in a three-way GOP primary.

McSally was seen as the heavy favorite to win the August 2018 primary but spent months and resources dispatching Kelli Ward, who was then coming off a 2016 primary loss to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Arpaio, who was coming off his 2016 loss as Maricopa County sheriff to Democrat Paul Penzone.

In 2022, the Republican Senate candidate, Blake Masters, also divided his resources ahead of an August primary attacking fellow Republicans while Kelly continued to press his message on TV and other screens.

Lake has sought to consolidate GOP support behind her campaign even though Lamb remains in the race and entered it six months before she did.

Lake has picked up the endorsement of Trump, at least 19 sitting U.S. senators and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Lake hasn’t acknowledged Lamb in her campaign messaging to this point, while focusing on Gallego, Biden and Sinema before she bowed out.

Lamb has focused his campaign on a message that as a sheriff he is best qualified to address problems along the southern border.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ariz. Senate race: Ruben Gallego hits TV screens with 'Lucky Lima' ad