PHOENIX — A PAC affiliated with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is taking its first step into the 2024 general election campaign by endorsing Democratic-Republican Ruben Gallego in the Arizona Senate race.
The group, CHC BOLD PAC, said it splashed about $1.1 million on TV, radio and digital ads targeting Latino matriarchs in the battleground.
Advertising“La Jefas” (“The Bosses”) aired in Spanish and Spanglish. “Grandmothers, mothers, sisters – bosses,” he says, speaking over the soft sounds of an acoustic guitar and trumpet in the background. “In the Senate, he will fight for them,” the narrator promises of Gallego.
The PAC told NBC News that $689,415 of the investment went to Hispanic broadcast spots, $250,000 to digital ads and $158,000 to Hispanic radio statewide. In total, this is the largest expenditure in the group’s 23-year history.
The PAC’s executive director, Victoria McGroary, said the Arizona spending is the first the group plans to make this election season. McGroary confirmed that more Latino Democratic Senate and House candidates will receive investments, but did not share details on who could expect the cash injection.
Gallego’s campaign fared ahead of Republican Kari Lake’s campaign in the hotly contested Arizona Senate race. In the second quarter, he raised $10.4 million for his campaign, while Lake raised $4.3 million. Gallego has spent more than $16.6 million on TV ads so far, according to AdImpact.
A recent AdImpact analysis shows Phoenix is the nation’s third most targeted political advertising market, with $107.5 million worth of ad space between Labor Day and Election Day. The only two ad markets with more overlap in political ad money are Philadelphia and Las Vegas, which are slated to air $127.4 million and $107.6 million of political programming, respectively. All three are the largest media markets in key states in both the presidential race and the Senate race.
McGroary projected confidence that Gallego would stand up to Lake. But, he said, “that doesn’t mean we’re not all on board and our foot is not completely on the gas.”
Lake and Gallego are scheduled to square off in an Oct. 9 debate hosted by Arizona Clean Elections, the state’s traditional administrator of political debates. A new debate over the debate began last week with Lake issue a statement Arizona Green Party candidate Eduardo Quintana is calling for inclusion on the stage. Quintana failed to meet the criteria for automatic entry into the debate.