Attack ad makes immigration issue in final days of N.J. governor’s race
Crime and immigration historically has been a political campaign staple. Remember California’s anti-immigrant milestone Proposition 187 in 1994?
With days left until the election and lagging in the polls, New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, a Republican, made the news with a tough-on-illegal-immigration TV ad many viewed as a departure from her moderate conservative persona.
Despite the success of a similar message on a national level for President Donald Trump, experts said Guadagno’s eleventh-hour pitch could backfire in heavily Democratic New Jersey.
Entitled “Sanctuary,” the ad denounces Democrat Phil Murphy’s stance on illegal immigration by invoking the 2007 Newark schoolyard shootings in which three students died and a fourth was left sexually assaulted, stabbed, and shot.
One of the perpetrators, Jose Carranza, was unlawfully in the country.
The ad plays on a statement Murphy made at a press event when asked about protecting undocumented immigrants living in New Jersey, even if some of those immigrants may have criminal backgrounds. “My bias is gonna be having their back,” Murphy said.
UPDATE (Nov. 2)
NPR reports that, in addition to the immigration attack ads in New Jersey, Republican Ed Gillespie has been slamming Democrat Ralph Northam for voting against a bill that would have banned sanctuary cities in Virginia, even though none exist in that state. A former Republican National Committee chair who once spoke of diversifying the GOP, Gillespie shifted to the right after a bruising primary in the spring. In one ad, the Gillespie campaign implies that Northam’s vote against the sanctuary city bill was a boon to the violent street gang MS-13, which was started by immigrants from El Salvador and has a presence in Virginia.
UPDATE (Nov. 6)
On the heels of Nassau County police investigating crimes of MS-13, the Republican candidate for county executive has tapped into concerns over the violent gang. The state GOP committee has sent out a controversial mailing suggesting Jack Martins’ Democratic opponent Laura Curran is “MS-13’s choice” for the position, going on to say, “She shouldn’t be yours.” Democrats in Nassau County call it a desperate attempt at fear mongering and accuse the GOP of “trying to capitalize on real tragedy.” But Martins, a former Republican state senator, is standing by the mailing. His campaign maintains that groups backing his opponent support sanctuary laws and are looking to “block the efforts of federal law enforcement to arrest members of the MS-13 gang.”
KJ