A liberal advocacy organization on Wednesday launched two six-figure television ad buys urging GOP Sens. Dean Heller (Nev.) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.) to oppose President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin.
The ads, from Allied Progress, will air on broadcast and cable TV stations in Arizona and Nevada. They touch on Mnuchin’s background as a former Goldman Sachs partner and the foreclosure practices of a bank he led called OneWest Bank.
“Former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin raised millions to elect Trump,” the narrator says in the ads. “Now Trump picked him to be America’s top economic official, even though Mnuchin made millions after his bank foreclosed on homeowners and discriminated against Latinos.”
{mosads}Heller and Flake are both up for re-election in 2018. Heller sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which will consider Mnuchin’s nomination. He’s also the only GOP senator who is up for re-election next year from a state Trump lost.
Flake was critical of Trump during the campaign but has said he will “give the president deference on people he chooses” for Cabinet positions.
“Arizona and Nevada were hit particularly hard by the foreclosure crisis that Steven Mnuchin and his Wall Street buddies helped to create — and profited from. Senators Flake and Heller have a simple choice: will they stand with Mnuchin and Goldman Sachs or with their constituents who were brutalized by Wall Street greed during the Great Recession?” Allied Progress Executive Director Karl Frisch said in a news release.
The ads come as Senate Democrats are also stepping up their efforts to oppose Mnunchin. Democrats are calling Mnuchin the “Foreclosure King” and asking the public to tell them their stories about homes being foreclosed on by OneWest.
Mnuchin spokesperson Tara Bradshaw said the ads “demonstrate one thing: that the far left is more focused on playing politics than working with the future administration to get things done for the American people.”
“Steven Mnuchin got over 100,000 homeowners loan modifications and reduced thousands of loan balances,” she added. “OneWest is an American success story, and Steven looks forward to telling it at his hearing before the Senate Finance Committee.”
– updated at 1:14 p.m.