| NEWS | Second Coming Unstuck Arizona GOP hopeful Jim Lamon’s Easter savior ad may be backfiring. BY ELIAS WEISS campaign ad — the third time this year his message was either rejected or publicly maligned. Retired energy executive and self- A funded political newcomer Jim Lamon is in a crowded field trying to secure the Republican nomination in the U.S. Senate race. Lamon is outspending his eight GOP opponents ahead of the August 2 primary, but the latest in a string of controversial television ads rubbed even conservative Christian Republican voters the wrong way. After 30 seconds of pious platitudes in the new ad, Lamon hints at being Arizona’s savior. It’s a close marriage of church and state that doesn’t sit right with everyone in his target audience, a departure from previous attempts. “He is a very arrogant man,” Darlene Packard, a straight-ticket Republican voter and devout Christian from Prescott, told Phoenix New Times. “If you live a life with Christian values, you don’t need to stand up there and say it. You show it.” Lamon trails Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich in the polls by 4 percentage points, according to recent data from Kansas City-based nonpartisan pollster co/ efficient, but the great majority of voters remain undecided. Commercial Controversy The Fountain Hills Republican first came under fire in January when Yahoo rejected a different video ad campaign, calling it “overly inflammatory and offensive.” That commercial featured the GOP slogan, “Let’s Go, Brandon,” a play on “Fuck Joe Biden.” One month later, Phoenix New Times reported Lamon was in the hot seat again after a pricey Super Bowl ad depicted the former CEO for DEPCOM Power, a Scottsdale-based utility-scale solar company, shooting Kelly with a revolver. Kelly’s wife, Gabby Giffords, a former congresswoman from Arizona, was shot in the head in 2011 during an assassination attempt near Tucson. It ended her career. Lamon’s recent Easter-themed 8 commercial, A New Dawn, isn’t as “in your face” or polarizing as previous attempts. What sets it apart is the backlash from voters inside his party. “These are dark times,” Lamon says in Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons the ad. “Times of plague and turmoil.” Lamon claims to know God’s plan to save America throughout most of the 30-second clip before turning the attention back to himself, hinting that such a plan might involve his ascension into office. “What was offensive to me was this whole notion that he is the Savior,” Chandler-based trial attorney Tom Ryan told New Times. “It’s wholly inappropriate and offensive. It made me sick to my stomach when I saw that.” Ryan, a Christian and former GOP voter, jilted the party in 2010. Today, he doesn’t recognize the Republican Party he grew up in, he said. “There is a real rise of Christian dominionism, which is not true Christianity at all,” Ryan said. “It should be concerning to everybody. By hitching their wagon to Christianity, they retain power, like in Nazi Germany.” Tweets praising the ad were nowhere to be found. It was universally slammed on Twitter. Lamon is among several prominent Republicans who falsely claimed to be an elector for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, even though the one-term president lost and the true elec- tors were repeatedly certified. He bank- rolled security efforts in the widely ridiculed election audit in Maricopa County and bragged about pushing Arizona Senate President Karen Fann into launching the review. That didn’t lose Lamon too many brownie points in the GOP. But the same Jim Lamon speaks with supporters at a “Stand for Freedom” rally at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Scottsdale Resort. cannot be said for A New Dawn and his other TV ads. “He says he’s going to be the savior of Arizona,” Packard said. “He’s not the savior of anything.” Arizona,” P Council as a Republican, a later was elected to the elected to the al Y uthority Boar Packard knows a thing or two about local politics. She ran for Prescott Valley Town Council as a Republican, and o about local po alley T Central Yavapai Fire District Board of Directors and the Central Arizona Fire andal Arizona Fir Medical Authority Board of Directors. d the She pointed to Matthew 6:5-8 regarding why she was “very offended” when A New Dawn popped up on her tele screen as children hunted for colored eggs outside. 8 r ery offended” when een as chil popped up on her television Mark Brnovich. “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men,” Packard recited from the Bible. “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen.” Touting Christian values doesn’t make you a Christian, Packard said. For her and other conservative voters, it flies in the face of some of the faith’s core doctrines. She and Ryan agreed that alt-right GOP >>p 11 hopefuls in Arizona largely rizona voters say one Republican candidate hoping to replace U.S. Senator Mark Kelly swung and missed with a recent You’re Brno’d Former President Donald Trump disses Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich. BY KATYA SCHWENK F ormer President Donald Trump said he isn’t happy with Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, dealing a blow to the Arizona top lawman’s bid for the U.S. Senate. The former president released a scathing statement last week, apparently frustrated that Brnovich had not taken further action on the 2020 election. Brnovich’s efforts to make a show of his action on “election integrity” as attorney general did not impress the man from Mar-a-Lago. Trump wrote that Brnovich “was given massive information on the fraud and so-called ‘irregularities’ that took place in the 2020 Presidential Election.” There is no evidence of mass fraud in the 2020 election results, in Maricopa County or elsewhere. “Rather than go after the people that committed these election crimes, it looks like he is just going to ‘kick the can down the road’ and stay in that middle path of non-controversy,” Trump said. Trump wrote that he will be making an endorsement in Arizona’s Senate race “in the not too distant future.” Brnovich is among several Republican candidates who are vying to unseat Democratic Senator Mark Kelly. In 2020, the former astronaut and businessman won his U.S. Senate race in a special election, flipping the seat from Republican-held to Democrat by defeating appointed incumbent Martha McSally. The field of Republican candidates for this year’s August 2 primary election includes Brnovich, businessman Jim Lamon, venture capi- talist Blake Masters, former Arizona National Guard adjutant general Michael McGuire, and former state representative Justin Olson. So far, polls have not shown any clear frontrunner, with many voters reporting they are still undecided. But according to Federal Election Commission data, Brnovich is lagging far behind some competitors in raising polit- ical funds. So far, Lamon has raised the most money out of the Republican candidates, reporting $13.8 million so far this election >>p 13 APRIL 28TH– MAY 4TH, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com G a g e S k i d m o r e
