Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) apparently thinks that the way to make inroads into Nevada's Latino voters is to have former senior aides go on a tirade about how his opponent—Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto—just isn't Latina enough. It started with a tweet from Tom McAllister, a former political director on Heck's Senate campaign: "Catherine is about as Mexican is I am. It's relevant when applying for scholarships … or running for #nvsen." And got worse from there.
He followed up with another tweet: "quick question does @CatherineForNV speak Spanish?" One of the responses to that was from another one of Heck's most trusted former aides, Mark Ciavola: "@TMAC702 I'll answer you in Spanish: No." Ciavola was Heck's campaign manager in 2014 and 2016 until leaving a few months ago. Then they took their show to Facebook, where McAllister accused Cortez Masto of "going around Nevada hyping up the fact that she could be the first female Hispanic ever elected to the U.S. Senate," and repeated his tweet. Ciavola charmingly chimed in with his view: "Hispandering at its finest. That's why so many Hispanic leaders in Nevada support Joe Heck." Kind of sounds like someone on Heck's payroll, no?
So far, not a peep out of Heck about what his friends and former aides have been up to. Maybe that's because he was too busy dealing with the fallout from his son Joey's "sharply racist and sexist comments" and upvoting of "inflammatory memes on Reddit." Inflammatory is putting it mildly. Joey was caught doing the same thing back in 2013, when he posted racist things about President Obama. Five years later, he's 18 and still at it. So Heck could have been too busy coming up with his statement about how he's dealing with his racist son to comment on his racist former aides. His campaign, though, has said that McCallister does not speak for the campaign.
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Cortez Masto, whose grandfather came to the U.S. from Mexico and who indeed would become Nevada's first Latina senator as well as the U.S. first Latina senator, blasted Heck's allies.
“First of all, I think it’s offensive, not just offensive to me, but to the many Mexican-Americans particularly in the state of Nevada who have worked so hard and provided so many contributions,” she said. […]
And she took aim at the idea that she isn’t Mexican enough because she doesn’t speak Spanish.
“I think its absolutely ridiculous — if that was the litmus test for whether or not you’re Mexican-American then Gov. Sandoval would be thrown into that,” she said of the popular Republican governor in Nevada.
This isn't the first time Heck surrogates have leveled racist attacks against Cortez Masto, and probably won't be the last. Because Heck—an unapologetic Trump supporter and a guy who has campaigned with Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio—probably doesn't see a problem with that.