Twelve relatives have signed a scathing op-ed in a Reno newspaper opposing Adam Laxalt, the Republican running for governor in Nevada.
The strategy took a page from a congressional race in Arizona, where siblings of Arizona GOP Rep. Paul Gosar endorsed rival Democratic candidate David Brill in stinging ads.
Laxalt’s relatives criticized the candidate as a “fake” Westerner who was actually raised in Washington, D.C. and moved to Nevada just five years ago.
“Aside from the occasional short visit, Adam never knew the state or its people,” they wrote in the Reno Gazette-Journal on Monday. “Perhaps if he had, he would stand for Nevada’s values rather than for those of his out-of-state donors.”
He will work to make public lands “less accessible,” cut public education funding, and reduce health care and reproductive rights, which would “limit how Nevadans care for their bodies,” they wrote.
Laxalt is in a tight race in the battleground state against Democrat Steve Sisolak to replace GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval.
The “irony is that while moving to Nevada to satisfy his enormous political ambitions, he has proceeded to oppose others’ rights to come to our state,” the relatives wrote. “In the face of Nevada’s history as a state made of newcomers, including our own immigrant forbears, he has advocated against immigrants.”
The piece also criticized Laxalt’s “train wreck” performance as a trial lawyer, ethical concerns during his current stint as attorney general, and turning that office into “little more than a four-year publicity tour” for his campaign for governor.
On Monday the head of the Nevada State Bar said Laxalt should have revealed, as required, his arrest as a teenager for suspected assault on a police officer on his application to the bar, the Gazette-Journal reported.
President Donald Trump stumped for Laxalt in a rally last week in Elko, where Trump insisted against all facts that Californians were “rioting” against immigrant sanctuary cities.
Laxalt could not immediately be reached for comment.