Undercover video published by an operative working for Project Veritas — and released Monday night — appeared to catch Arizona Democratic Senate nominee Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona congresswoman, as well as her campaign staff admitting she cannot reveal her true views about guns and immigration to Arizona voters.
The operative approached Sinema saying, “When I say ‘ban guns’ in California, we’re all like yeah, ban them. You say, ‘ban guns’ out here?” Rep. Sinema seemed to respond in a joking manner and finished the operative’s sentence, “They’ll actually shoot you.”
Campaign staffers of Arizona Democratic Senate nominee Kyrsten Sinema also reportedly discussed why it was better for her to avoid discussing gun control measures she actually supports.
“So we can’t talk about that [assault weapon bans] right? So what Kyrsten … the conversation that she can lead is how do we get to a place where we can, background checks … We’ve got to fix the gun show loophole, we have to fix the background check system,” Michelle Davidson, Sinema’s campaign manager, reportedly said. (RELATED: Claire McCaskill Demands Special Prosecutor For Project Vertias ‘Fraud’)
“We’ve got to make it harder for people who have been convicted of domestic violence and other violent crimes to get — I mean those are the conversations we can have,” Davidson continued.
A man alleged to be Steve Andrews, a major donor to Sinema’s campaign, agreed that running on gun control measures could not be on Sinema’s platform.
However, he added that even though she will not campaign on the banning “assault weapons,” he did note that “voting I’d have to assume she’ll be okay.” He said that “she won’t support assault weapons, I don’t think.”
Project Veritas Video screen capture
The alleged donor later admitted, “She probably is [progressive] in her heart, but she knows to survive and get elected, she’s gotta walk the walk a little bit. And I respect that, I’m tired of losing.”
The conversation later moved towards the immigration issue with Rep. Sinema apparently saying, “I believe that we should offer citizenship to every person in this country who isn’t bad. You know, if you haven’t committed a bad crime, you know, then you should get a path to citizenship. That’s what I believe.”
Lauren Fromm, introduced as a field organizer for Sinema says that “There’s a lot of very conservative people in Arizona and so [Sinema] can’t alienate the conservative or moderate conservative voters by being super pro-, she is pro-choice. She is very liberal, she’s progressive” and that she does not “want to draw too much attention to being progressive,” as Arizona is a very red state and she must attract moderate voters.
However, one alleged campaign staffer seemed to mock Sinema’s platform. Madison Snarr told the Project Veritas operative, ” “She’s going to vote for the interests of Arizonans. She’s going to stand up and protect Arizonan values. Whatever the f**k that means.”
Sinema’s campaign is the latest in Project Veritas videos to surface showing Democratic incumbents or first-time candidates running for the upper chamber in red states. Other Democratic campaign operations that Project Veritas secretly filmed were North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, and Tennessee Senate candidate Phil Bredesen.