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Kari Lake’s last-ditch effort to slime Ruben Gallego in the lead-up to Election Day landed with a dud.
Lake had been hyping up an effort by The Washington Free Beacon, a right-wing media outlet, to pry loose documents related to Gallego’s divorce from his ex-wife, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego.
Although the Gallegos have publicly been amicable since their split, Lake and other conservatives have homed in on the fact that their divorce came as Kate Gallego was pregnant, and the fishing expedition has seemed intent on finding details that could be used to sling mud at Gallego. Lake has run ads referring to Gallego as a “deadbeat dad” and last week promised that a “massive story” was on the horizon.
But on Thursday, an Arizona court unsealed the documents … and the world is still waiting on that massive story. As The Washington Post reported:
In an interview with The Washington Post last year, Gallego attributed the divorce to his post-traumatic stress disorder from serving in the Iraq War. The documents, however, offer little insight into why the Gallegos’ marriage fell apart. Instead, the 465 pages that were unsealed Thursday by the Yavapai County Superior Court detail standard divorce proceedings, including the dividing of property and assets, as well as custody and child support arrangements. They also include no details of any illegal activity or infidelity and expressly state that no physical abuse had occurred.
As far as drama is concerned, this is like turning on the television expecting to see “Bad Girls Club” but finding “Antiques Roadshow” instead.
It does, though, seem to signal quite a bit of desperation on Lake’s part. In recent weeks, she has also attacked Gallego over his long-estranged father’s criminal record. Gallego has called Lake’s attacks pathetic, and it’s hard to disagree.
Trailing in virtually all reputable polls and seemingly deserted — at least, financially — by the Republican Party’s well-funded power brokers, Lake is pulling out all the stops to avoid her second successive campaign defeat.