U.S. Senate candidate Ruben Gallego denounced Republican challenger Kari Lake as a “pathetic loser” for recently suggesting he was “controlled” by drug cartels as she alluded to the criminal history of Gallego’s long-estranged father.
During a Saturday news conference, Lake, a former newscaster, said Gallego, a Democratic U.S. representative, could not help shut down drug-related crime because of his connections to their criminal operations. It came as Lake scolded the media for not holding Gallego accountable for rising crime, which she blames on a porous border allowed by Democrats in Washington.
“We need to be calling out what he is about. I want to confront the cartels. I want to bring down the cartels. I want to end the cartels,” Lake said.
“He will never confront the cartels; he is controlled by them. He has close family members who are drug traffickers.”
Asked about her comments on Thursday, Gallego said Lake’s attack is characteristically insulting.
“She’s raising it because my father, who abandoned my family, is a convicted drug dealer,” Gallego said as he became visibly emotional. “It’s a stain that our family has had to carry. This is why my mom, my sisters and myself have worked our entire life to really live the American Dream and to serve and honor this country despite what he has done.
“But this is who Kari Lake is. She attacks families when she’s losing, because she is. She’s a pathetic loser. We saw that happen with the McCain family.”
It was a reference to Lake’s many attacks on the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whom she called a “loser” during her 2022 gubernatorial run.
Gallego also pointed to the defamation lawsuit that Lake did not contest from Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican who said he and his family have faced threats because of Lake’s unfounded claims of stolen elections. The court has yet to determine how much — if anything — Lake owes Richer for her words.
“I can take this,” Gallego said as he alluded to his Marine service in the Iraq War. “What does it say, though, about our country when you can do everything right, you can go serve your country in the hardest days of combat, work, like my mom did to support the family and reject this horrible man, and all it takes is craven politicians like Kari Lake to drag us all down?
“How many kids out there in this country want to do better, want to live the American dream, want to do better than their abusive father, but will be reminded time and time again that the sins of the father have been carried on by their children? That’s not the American way and for someone who considers herself a Christian, that’s certainly not a Christian thing to do.”
The biting personal words come in the final days before early voting in the Senate race gets underway next week. Lake and Gallego are running for the seat held by the retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.
Gallego’s connection to his father has played a minor role in his political career before.
During his 2014 initial run for Congress, Gallego was sued in a bid to force him to use the name he legally changed six years earlier. Gallego explained his decision this way:
“I was raised by a single mom and changed my name to honor the woman who raised me. I have been very open about this decision and the circumstance behind it. My mom is an immigrant and struggled every day to raise four kids on her own,” he said in a written statement at the time.
“My father abandoned my family when I was young. His choice to leave made my life and the lives of my three sisters much harder. I slept on the floor until I went to college and my sisters and I had to rely on the free lunch program to make sure we ate. His last name is Marinelarena. My mom is the reason I have had so many incredible opportunities in my life. I’m very proud to have her name.”
In Gallego’s book “They Called Us Lucky,” a memoir of his combat unit, he discussed his father briefly.
“My father’s construction business had gone bust. I found out later that he and one of his cousins had begun dabbling in the drug trade. If my father was making any money from his involvement, we never saw it. Eventually, my father was busted and found guilty of felony possession with intent to sell cocaine and marijuana. My uncle made out worse — he was shot and killed in Mexico. I never found out the details, and don’t care to.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: AZ Senate race: Lake ‘pathetic’ for raising dad’s past, Gallego says
