The Win It Back Political Action Committee (PAC) released an ad on Friday detailing how U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) “dumped his wife when she was nine months pregnant” for a Washington, DC, lobbyist.
“Ruben Gallego wants to be your U.S. senator, but he doesn’t want you to know who he really is: The guy who dumped his wife when she was nine months pregnant, trading her in for a newer model, a lobbyist in Washington, DC. Tell Ruben to stop blocking the release of his divorce files,” the narrator says in the ad, which Breitbart News exclusively obtained.
The Win It Back PAC, which is affiliated with Club for Growth Action, ad comes after the Washington Free Beacon filed a motion in January to seek the unsealing of Gallego’s divorce records:
In Arizona, as in most states, court records—including those related to divorces—are generally accessible to the public. But in the Gallegos’ case, the entire docket is under seal, something incredibly unusual in a state where the sealing of information, if it happens at all, is typically limited to specific sensitive information, like the identifying information of minor children.
At the same time, Gallego himself made the dissolution of his marriage an integral part of his political story. In a long interview with the Washington Post last March, Gallego attributed his divorce to post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered after serving in Iraq, telling the paper he drank too much, smoked too much, and became prone to “extreme outbursts.” (Gallego was a congressman at the time.)
This is not the first time conservatives and Republicans have attacked Gallego over the issues surrounding his divorce.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) released an ad in November 2023 stating that “rotten Ruben Gallego…abandoned his wife when she was nearly nine months pregnant, then married a D.C. lobbyist.”
The Free Beacon then reported in February that Gallego said he would “not be on the hook” to lobbyists and other special interests if he were elected to the Senate.
However, it appears that Gallego has voted for 38 bills that his wife, a lobbyist, has lobbied for as director of government advocacy at the National Association of Realtors.
The National Association of Realtors reportedly has touted many of the bills that Gallego has sponsored or backed:
Gallego sponsored the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act of 2020, a bill the National Association of Realtors endorsed, to provide tax credits to developers to build houses in low-income areas. The association backed the SAFE Banking Act of 2023, which Gallego cosponsored, to provide federal protections to landlords and banks that do business with state-approved marijuana dealers.
Gallego voted in 2019, the year he began dating [Sydney] Barron, for a bill that increased state and local tax deductions, a measure that many have criticized as a handout to wealthy blue state homeowners. Sixteen Democrats, including Arizona Rep. Greg Stanton, voted against the bill. The National Association of Realtors said it “advocated strongly” for its passage.
“I’m never going to run a race like Kyrsten Sinema. She takes in millions from the wealthiest people in the country but next to nothing from regular folks,” Gallego said in a 2023 fundraising email where he claimed he would not be “on the hook” of the lobbyists.
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
