Sen. Jeff Flake under pressure to oppose Trump Treasury pick
A liberal advocacy group is launching a television commercial today urging viewers to pressure Sen. Jeff Flake to vote against President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin.
Allied Progress told The Arizona Republic that the 30-second spot, part of a six-figure ad buy, will run on cable-TV and broadcast channels in Arizona.
"Former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin raised millions to elect Trump," the ad's narrator says. "Now Trump picked him to be America's top economic official, even though Mnuchin made millions after his bank foreclosed on homeowners and discriminated against Latinos. Tell Senator Flake to vote no on Mnuchin. We need a Treasury secretary who will help us, not himself."
Flake, Arizona's first-term junior Republican senator, was one of Trump's most prominent GOP critics during the 2016 presidential race and is up for re-election in 2018. In a Senate that Republicans control by a 52-48 margin, liberal activists apparently view Flake as a vote they might be able to flip under certain circumstances.
“Arizona was hit harder than nearly every other state by the foreclosure crisis that Steven Mnuchin and his Wall Street buddies helped to create — and profited from," Karl Frisch, Allied Progress executive director, said in a written statement announcing the new ad. "Senator Flake has a simple choice: Will he stand with Mnuchin and Goldman Sachs or with his fellow Arizonans who were brutalized by Wall Street greed during the Great Recession?”
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In November, a group called the Progressive Change Campaign Committee ran a TV ad urging viewers to tell Flake to demand that Trump fire Steve Bannon, Trump's controversial adviser.
Flake has repeatedly said that, as a general rule, he likes to give presidents "wide deference" in putting together their teams.
Kelli Ward, the former state senator who lost her 2016 primary challenge to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., already has said she is running against Flake in the 2018 GOP primary.
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