Republican ad attacks Democrat Katie Hobbs on Title 42. Bad timing or sound strategy?

Forget racism or culture wars. It’s still all about “open borders” for Republicans eyeing the Arizona governor’s seat.

A new attack ad against Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs focuses in part on her flip-flopping on Title 42.

But the timing of the Republican Governors Association’s ad is peculiarly intriguing.

The 60-second ad hit the airwaves as a draft opinion from five conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices was leaked, indicating they’ll end Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark abortion rights ruling.

Whether the draft ruling holds true or not, it is already changing the tune of the election, sending both Republicans and Democrats huddling to rethink their election messaging.

The border wins for the GOP, not abortion

Senate Republicans reportedly met behind closed doors on Tuesday to discuss the fallout of the court leak that prompted protests in cities across the country.

Republican leaders emerged from the meeting “eager to talk about just about anything besides the substance of the draft opinion,” CNN reported.

That tells me releasing the attack ad against Hobbs now isn’t a coincidence, but rather part of the Republican strategy to keep voters focused on the border, not on abortion rights.

“There’s a crisis at our border. Record surge in crossings, illegal drugs, human trafficking flooding into our communities,’’ the narrator says in the ad, blaming Biden for it.

The narrator moves on to praise Gov. Doug Ducey and Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for “stepping up” to “secure the border, increase patrols and take the fight to the cartels.”

The ad then hits Hobbs, who is competing with Marco López and Aaron Lieberman for the Democratic nomination to succeed Ducey – who happens to head the governors group that paid six figures to air it.

“Unfortunately, Katie Hobbs showed her weakness on this crisis by trying to be on both sides of the issue,” the narrator says, referring to Hobbs flipping on Title 42.

There are better issues on which to attack Hobbs

Title 42 is a Trump-era pandemic restriction that the Biden administration is set to end on May 23 and which Republicans are fighting to keep in place not as a public health measure but simply as border enforcement.

Hobbs, the current secretary of state, did flip-flop on the policy rather quickly and without explanation.

But that still seems a weak attack when Hobbs’ immigration stance is contextualized and compared against her involvement with the racially motivated firing of a state Senate staffer.

Is Title 42 really a bigger issue than two federal juries affirming that racism was at the heart of the firing of a Black Senate lawyer? I think not.

Then again, Republicans are counting on the gullibility of voters to believe anything they say and show them. To that end, the ad is indeed powerful because of the images it uses.

The visuals from the southern border paint chaotic scenes of drugs and people being smuggled onto U.S. soil. The images chosen for the ad may be real but also exaggerations, meant to stoke fear of a “border invasion.” 

Ads are about distraction, not necessarily truth

Like anything else, ads often resonate not necessarily because of their truthfulness or depth but because a sliver of truth is twisted to fit a narrative. Most people passively eat the sound bites fed to them.

There is no question that thousands of asylum seekers are showing up at the southern border and that cartels keep outsmarting U.S. authorities. Governors, however, have limited power on enforcing federal immigration laws despite their claims and rhetoric.

Yet again, talking about “open borders” remains Republicans’ best bet to keep their base distracted.

Meanwhile, Hobbs and the Democrats can thank the heavens and the leaker of the court’s draft opinion, since talk of abortion is likely to eclipse everything else.

Elvia Díaz is an editorial columnist for The Republic and azcentral. Reach her at 602-444-8606 or elvia.diaz@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter, @elviadiaz1. 

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