If you think your relationship with your siblings is bad, consider Republican representative Paul Gosar of Arizona. Six of his brothers and sisters star in political ads launched this week for David Brill, Gosar’s Democratic opponent in the midterm election.
“Paul Gosar the congressman isn’t doing anything for rural America,” says his sister Grace, a rural physician, in one ad.
“We gotta stand up for our name, this is not who we are,” says his brother David, a lawyer, in another.
“There isn’t a kooky, crazy, nutty thing that he isn’t a part of,” David said in a Washington Post interview (paywall). Gosar has gained notoriety in Washington politics for incendiary comments, extreme positions, and conspiratorial beliefs. One of them is claiming that the far right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 was actually organized by an “Obama sympathizer” and funded by George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and bogeyman for the right wing. In the same Vice News interview where he said that, Gosar spread the false accusation that Soros, who is a Holocaust survivor, collaborated with the Nazis.
Gosar was quick to attack his siblings today via Twitter.
The Phoenix New Times reports that a Brill staffer reached out to the siblings after seeing David’s tweets criticizing his brother.