In its first commercial for the final election season, the marketing campaign for Rep. Mike Garcia, a politically susceptible Santa Clarita Republican, presents a deceptive description of the congressman’s position in passing the Violence In opposition to Ladies Act, which supplies assist for victims of home violence and sexual assault.
The 30-second commercial, titled “Voices,” was launched Tuesday. It options an unnamed feminine constituent who says: “Mike co-sponsored the Violence In opposition to Ladies Act to guard us in opposition to home violence. That’s why we’d like Mike Garcia in Congress.”
Garcia made the identical co-sponsorship declare at a Santa Clarita city corridor occasion final month, calling his help “a giant deal” as a result of “not very many Republicans” had sponsored reauthorization of the landmark 1994 regulation.
However in 2021, Garcia voted in opposition to a model of the reauthorization measure that was handed by the Democratic Home majority, becoming a member of conservatives who protested provisions that expanded protections for LGBTQ+ folks and tightened gun entry for folks convicted of abusing or stalking a relationship accomplice. As a substitute, Garcia co-sponsored a Republican-led stop-gap measure to resume the act for one 12 months, minus the brand new provisions, that failed to maneuver ahead.
He was not a co-sponsor of the amended reauthorization of the Violence In opposition to Ladies Act that Democratic President Biden finally signed into regulation the next 12 months as a part of a wide-ranging federal spending measure. It’s that model of the act that continues to be in power as we speak.
The Garcia marketing campaign didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Garcia’s Democratic opponent, George Whitesides, additionally launched his first advert on Tuesday. The 30-second TV spot, titled “Expertise,” highlights Whitesides’ time as a NASA chief of employees and a chief govt of Mojave-based Virgin Galactic.
“I’ll use my enterprise expertise to unravel issues as a substitute of taking part in politics,” Whitesides says within the advert.
The race between Garcia and Whitesides to signify Congressional District 27 in northern Los Angeles County, together with the Antelope Valley, is among the best — and consequential — within the nation.
Erin Covey, an analyst for the Prepare dinner Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper, stated the race will likely be essential in figuring out whether or not Republicans preserve their slim majority within the U.S. Home. Though Garcia has been elected 3 times, he represents a district the place Democrats maintain a big voter registration benefit, and which President Biden received by double digits in 2020.
“I feel that is going to be a race to observe,” Covey stated throughout a roundtable dialogue on the Democratic Nationwide Conference in Chicago final month. “It’s suburban. It’s various. It’s a race the place [Vice President Kamala] Harris ought to actually be a lift.”
The brand new adverts by Garcia and Whitesides mark the beginning of a serious promoting blitz that can inundate Southern California airwaves by means of election day.
The Congressional Management Fund, an excellent PAC that helps Republicans working for the Home, has reserved $18.2 million for promoting within the Los Angeles space this fall, with a give attention to the twenty seventh District.
The Home Majority PAC, which backs Democrats, has booked greater than $22.4 million in tv and digital adverts in each English and Spanish within the Los Angeles media market, one of many nation’s most costly.
The Home Majority PAC stated final 12 months that it will spend $35 million in California, roughly triple what it spent on the 2022 midterm campaigns within the Golden State, when Democrats underperformed in some districts that had been anticipated to be strongholds.
The brand new commercial from Garcia’s marketing campaign leans into his navy credentials. The congressman, a former Navy fighter pilot, flew in additional than 30 fight missions throughout Operation Iraqi Freedom earlier than spending 11 years as an govt with protection contractor Raytheon.
“Whereas I’m now not within the cockpit, my struggle for you and the nation by no means stops,” he says within the advert, sporting a brown leather-based flight jacket.
Constituents chime in to say that his “new mission” contains reducing prescription drug prices and “preventing the profession politicians” to decrease prices for households. The advert doesn’t specify which prices.
The brand new advert for Whitesides says he created greater than 700 jobs within the Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita whereas main Virgin Galactic.
These jobs included positions for engineers, technicians, accountants, human relations professionals and others, with a give attention to early-career growth for current highschool and group school graduates, Whitesides stated in an interview this week.
Whitesides, a first-time candidate, stated his first advert focuses on job creation as a result of so most of the district’s residents endure lengthy commutes to work in Los Angeles whereas residing within the Antelope Valley, the place housing is extra inexpensive.
“Individuals are hungry for native job alternatives in order that they don’t should spend 4 hours on the highway,” Whitesides stated.
Within the advert, Whitesides additionally says persons are scuffling with crime and that he’ll “get extra funding for police.”
Whitesides has come out in favor of Proposition 36, a statewide poll measure that requires stiffer penalties for some drug and theft crimes.
The measure, referred to as the Homelessness, Drug Habit, and Theft Discount Act, asks voters to partially unwind Proposition 47, a controversial poll initiative handed in 2014 that reclassified some nonviolent felonies as misdemeanors.
Proposition 36 has been endorsed by the California Republican Get together.
Democrats are cut up on the measure. It has been endorsed by some big-city mayors, together with San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. However Gov. Gavin Newsom and a few high Democratic leaders within the state Legislature have spoken out in opposition to it, alleging it will return California to a draconian tough-on-crime period that swelled the state’s jail inhabitants to unconstitutional ranges.
Whitesides stated he’s “one of many few Democrats who’ve come out in favor of the reform measure” as a result of residents wish to get smash-and-grab robberies beneath management and are “rightly involved about public security.”
In his city corridor assembly final month, Garcia stated he, too, supported extra funding for regulation enforcement. He stated Proposition 47 wanted to be nixed and that state Democrats had been pushing too many “pro-criminal” insurance policies.
Instances employees author Noah Bierman contributed to this report.