Governor’s race heating up in Arizona

PHOENIX — The race to become Arizona’s next governor is heating up and Valley political experts say campaign ads will start to take over television and radio airwaves soon.

“We’re starting to see some serious punching in the commercials, often by third parties,” KTAR political expert Mike O’Neil said. “We’ve seen third party committees supporting Doug Ducey go after Scott Smith, go after Christine Jones.”

Arizona’s gubernatorial primary election is two months away and O’Neil says political advertising attacks and negative campaigning will only get worse as the race continues.

“As we get closer and closer to the actual primary date, I think it is foreordained to get nasty,” O’Neil said.

The analyst said many people are wondering who will come out of this political battle the least bloodied, but he thinks the answer is easy. He said it has to do with the wallet size of two particular candidates.

“It’s not hard to say. You’re clearly going to need big money to play in this league so Smith and Ducey would be my guess at this point,” he said.