Mark Brnovich, Republican candidate for Arizona attorney general, has filed a cease and desist letter against his opponent, Democrat Felecia Rotellini.
Brnovich claims that a television commercial, titled “Watchdog,” paid for by the Rotellini campaign, contains “defamatory statements” and illustrates “an absolute indifference and hostility toward the truth.”
The ad accuses Brnovich of fighting a bill “that would have prevented private prisons from housing out-of-state inmates convicted of certain crimes, including homicide and sexual assaults,” the Arizona Republic reports. The ad then connects a 2010 prisoner escape, which lead to the murder of two people, to the defeat of the bill.
However, Arizona prison records show that the inmates who escaped and murdered two people “had been sentenced in Arizona for their original crimes. The legislation would not have applied to them,” according to the Republic.
The Rotellini campaign is still standing by the ad and has refused to pull it off the air.