Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake's office in Arizona was put in lockdown on Tuesday after a staffer opened an envelope with a "suspicious substance" inside that had a note attached to it with the message "caution anthrax."
Authorities were promptly called to the office, located in Phoenix. They included multiple law enforcement agencies and a hazmat team. A campaign spokesperson said the substance is being tested.
Lake blamed her political opponents for the incident, saying that the "radical left, with help from the mainstream media, escalated its attacks against me from baseless smears and legal harassment to physical threats."
"Today, my office received a suspicious envelope, potentially containing anthrax — an attempt to intimidate and silence me. This isn't just about me; it's an attack on our movement. I won't be intimidated, and those responsible must be brought to justice. The time to unite against these dangerous, un-American tactics is now," she added, as reported by Fox News.
The latest developments in the Arizona Senate race have taken a personal tone, with Democrat Ruben Gallego demanding an apology from Lake last week after she encouraged the unsealing of his divorce proceedings.
While the records do not demonstrate evidence of infidelity or domestic abuse within the marriage, Ruben Gallego had hoped to keep them private in order to avoid personal scrutiny.
"We demand an apology from Kari Lake for lying about our family and the circumstances of our divorce," both Gallego and his ex wife Kate, the mayor of Phoenix, said in a joint statement. "She will stop at nothing to score a cheap political point — even if it means endangering the privacy and well-being of our young son. We have long put our child before all else and will continue to do so."
Lake denied all accusations but continued her attacks on Gallego. "I hope everybody who says they're going to vote for him will hold off until we get the details about why he ran off on his wife when she was nine-months pregnant," Lake said on KTAR-FM. "We don't know if it was spousal abuse."
The records, from 2016, show that Gallego filed for divorce from Kate ahead of the birth of their son, stating that their marriage was "irretrievably broken," a commonplace legal term in Arizona. They largely determine how the two intended to co-parent their son.
The records were unsealed following a lawsuit filed by conservative journalism website Washington Free Beacon, which argued that divorce records were normally unsealed in Arizona and that Arizona voters deserved transparency from Ruben Gallego as he made his bid for Senate.
Practically all polls show Gallego ahead in the race with two weeks to go before election day. Nonpartisan forecaster Cook Political Report considers the race a "Lean Democrat" one.
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