Democrat Ruben Gallego leans into border security in battleground Senate race [Video]

PHOENIX — TV advertising showing candidates touring the U.S.-Mexico border has become a staple of Republican political campaigns around the country. But this summer, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego got in on the action as his party tries to win voters’ trust in his battleground Arizona Senate race — and beyond.

“Ruben Gallego has stood side by side with me, the only member of Congress that has come regularly to my border,” Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway says in the ad. “He is fighting for solutions. Better technology. More manpower.”

It’s far from the only border security ad on Arizona’s airwaves. Gallego’s competitor, GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake, has been bashing him on the border, with one ad tying Gallego to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ border policies and featuring a 2017 clip of Gallego on the House floor referring to Donald “Trump’s stupid, dumb, border wall.”

The back-and-forth on the issue …