9 months ago
Last year Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff called for a boycott of Fox News for broadcasting “lies” that “deliberately undermine our elections.” Now a PAC supporting the Senate-hopeful is paying the conservative network to run attack ads helping Schiff.
A week after Schiff’s campaign dropped an ad about Republican opponent Steve Garvey, a super PAC supporting Schiff made its first buy for a similar spot, denouncing Garvey as “too conservative for California.”
The initial $200,000 buy is part of a larger ad run that PAC organizers expect will reach seven figures.
The ad warns Garvey — a retired MLB star and political newcomer who voted for Donald Trump twice but avoided backing the former president during this campaign — will bring Trump-like politics to the deep blue state.
“If Steve Garvey wins, he could tip the Senate into Republican hands and advance Trump’s MAGA agenda right here in California,” the ad says.
It’s an indirect effort to keep another candidate, Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, from making it to the runoff where she’d pose a more direct challenge to Schiff.
Schiff holds a sizable lead in recent polls with Garvey and Porter vying for second place in the state’s so-called jungle primary where the top two finishers regardless of party advance to the November runoff.
Schiff’s campaign declined to comment.
A spokesperson for the pro-Schiff PAC said Friday that using Fox was crucial to targeting Garvey’s core audience, warning that the Republican might try to send a different message to those viewers than he would to more moderate voters he must win to grab a top spot in the March 5 primary.
"We are reaching voters through many different channels, but let's be real. FOX News is the first place that Steve Garvey will use to reinvent himself and cover up his true, MAGA conservative record,” Kyle Layman, executive director of Standing Strong PAC said in a text message. “It's our job to make sure he can't do that."
Garvey’s team scoffed at the move.
“Steve Garvey’s campaign has always been and will continue to be about bringing all Californians together for common sense, compassionate solutions to today’s real problems, not trite political hatchet jobs,” Matt Shupe, a spokesperson for Garvey’s campaign said Friday, adding that Californians were “tired of this divisive rhetoric.”
“This is why Steve Garvey continues to rise in the polls,” Shupe added.
Though Porter’s campaign declined to comment, the candidate blasted Schiff when his campaign’s version of the ad dropped last week. Porter called the tactic “brazenly cynical” on X, formerly Twitter, and criticized the attempt to “box out” other qualified Democrats.
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