Lake “sad” for bringing up his father’s past, Gallego said

U.S. Senate candidate Ruben Gallego blasted Republican challenger Kari Lake as a “pathetic loser” for recently suggesting he was “controlled” by drug cartels while alluding to the criminal history of Gallego’s long-estranged father.

At a press conference on Saturday, Lake, a former news anchor, said Gallego, a Democratic U.S. representative, could not help stop drug-related crime because of his connections to their criminal activities. It came as Lake blasted the media for not holding Gallego accountable for rising crime, which she blames on a porous border allowed by Democrats in Washington.

‘We have to make it clear what he is talking about. I want to confront the cartels. I want to take down the cartels. I want to end the cartels,” Lake said.

“He will never confront the cartels; he is controlled by them. He has close relatives who are drug traffickers.”

Asked about her comments Thursday, Gallego said Lake’s attack was characteristically offensive.

“She brings it up because my father, who abandoned my family, is a convicted drug dealer,” Gallego said, becoming visibly emotional. ‘It is a stain that our family has had to bear. This is why my mother, my sisters and I have worked our entire lives to truly live the American Dream and serve and honor this country, despite what he has done.

“But this is who Kari Lake is. She attacks families when she is losing, because she is. She’s a pathetic loser. We have seen that happen with the McCain family.”

It was a reference to Lake’s many attacks on the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whom she called a “loser” during her 2022 governorship.

Gallego also pointed to Lake’s defamation lawsuit filed by Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican who said he and his family have faced threats over Lake’s baseless claims of a stolen election. The court has yet to determine how much Lake Richer is owed for her words.

“I can handle this,” Gallego said, alluding to his Navy service in the Iraq War. But what does it say about our country when you can do everything right, go and serve your country in the worst days of struggle, work like my mother did to support the family and reject this terrible man, and all that? Is it necessary for cowardly politicians like Kari Lake to bring us all down?

“How many children in this country want to do better, want to live the American dream, want to do better than their abusive father, but will be reminded again and again that the sins of the father were borne by their father? children? That’s not the American way and for someone who considers themselves a Christian, it’s certainly not Christian.”

The biting personal words come in the final days before Senate elections start next week. Lake and Gallego are running for the seat of retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.

Gallego’s connection to his father has previously played a minor role in his political career.

During his first run for Congress in 2014, Gallego was sued in an attempt to force him to use the name he legally changed six years earlier. Gallego explained his decision this way:

“I was raised by a single mother and changed my name to honor the woman who raised me. I have been very open about this decision and the circumstances behind it. My mother is an immigrant and struggled every day to raise four children on her own,” he said in a written statement at the time.

“My father abandoned my family when I was young. His choice to leave made my life and the lives of my three sisters much more difficult. I slept on the floor until I went to college and my sisters and I relied on the free lunch program to make sure we ate. His last name is Marinelarena. My mother is the reason I have had so many incredible opportunities in my life. I am very proud to have her name.”

In Gallego’s book “They Called Us Lucky,” a memoir of his combat unit, he briefly discussed his father.

“My father’s construction company had gone bankrupt. I later found out that he and one of his cousins started getting involved in the drug trade. If my father made money from his involvement, we never saw it. Ultimately, my father was arrested and found guilty of felony possession with intent to sell cocaine and marijuana. My uncle made it worse: he was shot and killed in Mexico. I never found out the details, and I don’t care.’