The border from afar

What does the border look like to voters in the rest of the country? ... Political ads don't paint a pretty picture … Walz is coming back to Tucson.

Somewhere in North Carolina, the U.S.-Mexico border is going to get a Congressman elected.

It’ll be the same story in other states far from the border, like a legislative candidate in Minnesota who wants to “stand against extreme immigration policies.” They're all running campaign ads on YouTube that make the border a hometown issue.

When we first started going through political advertising records from Google, which owns YouTube, we were pleasantly surprised to find an ad showing immigrants as friends and neighbors. After all, most immigrants are just trying to get by like everybody else.

But it was all downhill from there. Nearly every single ad we found was pretty horrific, and a lot of them were viewed thousands upon thousands of times by voters.

Dan Osborn, an independent candidate for Senate in Nebraska, got hammered for suggesting a “clear path to citizenship,” alongside flashing images of chaos at the border. That ad was paid for by the Senate Leadership Fund and tried to link Osborn to liberal politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders. One version of the ad was viewed more than 800,000 times in Nebraska.

Politicians have a long list of tropes they use to vilify immigrants and make the border look scary. This year, the ones we came across most often were the border as a lawless area, immigrants as criminals, and immigrants supposedly getting government benefits while hard-working Americans struggle to get by.

Those tropes appeared all over the political ads tracked by the Google Ads Transparency Center, which shows who paid for political ads, how often they were viewed, and when they ran.

The border and immigration often popped up alongside other high-profile issues, like abortion and which bathrooms transgender people use. All three of those issues were featured side-by-side in an attack ad against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, which was viewed nearly 1 million times by Ohio voters the last week of October.

In a sign of how cost-effective political ads on YouTube can be, the Senate Leadership Fund only had to spend about $20,000 to get those views.

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In another example, the Congressional Leadership Fund ran an ad saying U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a longtime Democrat in Ohio, wanted to give “billions in taxpayer handouts to illegals.” That one was seen about 50,000 times in northern Ohio.

Another ad claimed Kamala Harris funded “job training for criminal illegals” in 2009, and she’s now promoting “taxpayer-funded sex changes for illegal immigrants.”

The most egregious ad we found came from Make America Great Again Inc. The message was that “Kamala created the border crisis” and wouldn’t fix it. The images they included made it look like most immigrants were murderers and rapists, rather than people living their lives and not causing problems.

Americans for Prosperity claimed Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat who is teetering on the edge of losing his re-election bid, supported “open borders” that allowed fentanyl to pour into Montana. The Congressional Leadership Fund made a similar claim about Don Davis, a Democratic U.S. Representative running for re-election in North Carolina.

As you may have noticed by now, most of the ads were paid for by Republican candidates or the committees that support them. We didn’t see the border appear in many ads from Democrats.

But there are a couple of local examples. In Southern Arizona, Democratic candidates like Kevin Volk in Legislative District 17 and Kirsten Engel in Congressional District 6 pointed to border security briefly in their ads, but they didn’t go into much detail.

If you want to know more about political ads in Southern Arizona and the rest of the state, our sister newsletter the Arizona Agenda wrote about ads in Arizona races yesterday.

And the Google Ads Transparency Center is worth a look. For the most part, everything is user-friendly and you can search by candidate name, the groups that paid for the ads, or congressional district.

One more time: Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is coming back to Arizona for his fifth visit of the cycle, 12News’ Haley Williams reports. He’ll be in Tucson (and Flagstaff) Saturday. The campaign hasn’t announced details of the event yet, but he was last in Tucson just three weeks ago.

Investigation incoming: State Sen. Justine Wadsack called for an investigation of the Pima County Recorder’s Office for closing the online portal where voters can request early ballots, KVOA’s Sarika Sood reports. Wadsack, a Republican in Legislative District 17, sent a letter to Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly asking her to produce all documents related to the decision to shut down the portal.

Busted: A Sahuarita man accused of stealing 12 pro-Trump political signs was arrested Thursday, the Green Valley News reports. The 75-year-old is registered as an independent, and his case was transferred to the veterans court.

The youth vote: A panel of University of Arizona Gen-Z voters told KGUN’s Blake Phillips about the issues driving them to the polls, like discrimination, gun violence and reproductive rights.

“We had a shooting just a few weeks ago, and someone died and was right on campus and no classes were canceled or anything. So it's just like, so prevalent," first-time voter Kim Ngomo said.

Park in peril: The Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church is considering selling the Amphi Neighborhood Park, which it currently leases to the City of Tucson, due to the growing population of homeless people residing there, the Tucson Sentinel’s Natalie Robbins reports. Mutual aid groups provide basic necessities to people there, but the park’s gates were recently locked. The Tucson City Council has heard from residents who want parks across the city cleaned out, and activists calling for better outreach for people with nowhere else to go.

Clickers for safety: The Tucson Unified School District on Tuesday purchased a new security device that attaches to employee badges and acts like a clicker to alert security in case of emergency, per KGUN’s Alex Dowd. The district governing board unanimously approved a five-year, $5 million contract with Centegix, saying it would provide a centralized communications system replacing intercoms across the district, despite some grumbling from board member Ravi Shah that they just hired a security consultant who “wouldn’t be influenced by, no offense, all the flashy presentations,” and hasn’t reported back about what they need yet. Catalina Foothills recently bought the same product.

“Why is this before us now before our safety and security consultant is able to do some of that work and make sure we’re not just led by great presentation?” Shah asked.

42.9%: The turnout rate in Pima County as of October 29.