Mark Kelly releases Spanish ad featuring Rep. Gallego

Arizona Senate candidate Mark Kelly released a Spanish-language ad Friday featuring Phoenix-area Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) as the Democrat looks to shore up Hispanic support less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 election.

It’s the fourth Spanish-language ad for Kelly, who leads incumbent GOP Sen. Martha McSally by nearly 8 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

In the ad, Gallego, a Marine veteran, speaks Spanish as he praises Kelly’s military service as the source of his “determination and values.”

“As a veteran, he knows the importance of unity, compromise, and hard work,” Gallego says in the ad.

“He understands the sacrifices that were made so that this country could grow,” adds Gallego.

Kelly, a former Navy pilot, flew 39 combat missions during Desert Storm before being selected by NASA as a space shuttle astronaut.

He is challenging McSally, herself a former fighter pilot who was first elected to Congress in a special election to fill the seat of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), Kelly’s wife.

Giffords resigned from the House in 2012 after being shot at a constituents event outside a supermarket in Arizona.

McSally was appointed to her current Senate seat following the resignation of Sen. John Kyl (R), who himself was appointed to the seat after Republican Sen. John McCain’s death in 2018.

Earlier that year, McSally lost a race for the state’s other Senate seat against then-Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D).

The once solid-red state has been leaning more Democratic over the past decade, a shift that can be attributed to a demographic change and a rebuttal of Arizona’s hard-line immigration policies, largely put in place by Republican administrations.

Earlier this month, more than 70 of the state’s Hispanic leaders announced their endorsement of Kelly.

Gallego, who was first elected to Congress in 2014, is not facing a challenger this election, and is vying to lead the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s campaign arm, Bold PAC, next year.

Gallego was viewed as an early contender for the Senate seat now pursued by Kelly but did not run, avoiding a potentially costly primary battle against the former astronaut.