Taxpayers paid for embattled GOP senator to robocall constituents during early voting: report

Interim Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) used taxpayer funds to robocall Arizonians as she continues to trail Democrat and former astronaut Mark Kelly.

"Less than three weeks before a tough election, Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) has used her office’s taxpayer-funded resources to send out a robocall touting a key campaign issue—her work on COVID-19 policy—to Arizonans," The Daily Beast reported Thursday.

"Normally, mass official communication with constituents so close to an election would be prohibited," The Beast explained. "But a waiver approved by the Senate Rules Committee in March has made it permissible—if, and only if, the communication is for the purposes of 'providing updated information about the pandemic, and providing information about the federal government's response.'”

The publication interviewed Meredith McGehee, executive director of the nonpartisan good-government group Issue One.

“What you see in the McSally communication is, a kind of a touting of her constituent services, and that’s where the line is pretty blurred,” McGehee said. “It skates along the edges of whether or not, in the middle of a very hot re-election campaign, she is truly abiding by the purpose of the waiver. It is certainly a legitimate question to ask.”