Giffords is launching her campaign in places affected by incidents of gun violence. Gabby Giffords gets mean

Gabby Giffords, irreproachable figure of sympathy, has fashioned an improbable new role for herself this election year: ruthless attack dog.

The former Democratic congresswoman, whose recovery from a gunshot wound to the head captivated the country, has unleashed some of the nastiest ads of the campaign season, going after GOP candidates in Arizona and New Hampshire with attacks even some longtime supporters say go too far. And Republicans on the receiving end are largely helpless to hit back, knowing a fight with the much-admired survivor is not one they’re likely to win.


Some of the toughest spots from Giffords’ newly formed pro-gun-control super PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, hammer Republican Martha McSally, a retired Air Force pilot who is running for the Arizona seat Giffords once held. One features a wrenching testimonial from a woman named Vicki who weeps and stumbles over her words as she recounts how her 19-year-old daughter was hunted down and murdered by an enraged ex-boyfriend.

( PHOTOS: Gabrielle Giffords’ congressional career)

“He had threatened her before. I knew. I just knew,” Vicki says. A narrator then declares that McSally “opposes making it harder for stalkers to get a gun.”

It’s no accident that Giffords is singling out McSally, people close to the former congresswoman say.

During her unsuccessful 2012 campaign, McSally ran TV commercials comparing herself to Giffords. The Giffords team fumed, and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, released a terse statement declaring, “Martha McSally is no Gabby Giffords.”

( Also on POLITICO: Gabrielle Giffords’ ad push aims to aid successor)

Another anti-McSally ad features a woman named Carol who says her daughter was killed by a criminal who bought a firearm at a gun show and didn’t receive a background check — a check, she states, that McSally would oppose.

“To McSally, it’s just politics,” Carol says as she clutches a picture of her deceased daughter. “To me, it’s personal.”

Giffords also is going after Marilinda Garcia, a New Hampshire congressional candidate who, viewers are told, has “strange ideas” on gun laws. Another GOP hopeful in the Granite State, Frank Guinta, is ripped for “support[ing] the loophole that lets stalkers buy guns without a background check, no questions asked.”

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In a midterm cluttered with negative ads, many of them seemingly crafted with the same cookie-cutter approach, Giffords’ commercials stand out for their intensity. Vicki’s emotional display, for instance, is something rarely seen in political ads.

Giffords is launching her campaign in parts of the country that have been affected by high-profile incidents of gun violence.

In the Arizona district, wounds from the 2011 shooting that nearly took Giffords’ life are never far from the surface. (The Democratic candidate, Rep. Ron Barber, a former Giffords staffer who succeeded her in Congress, was also wounded in the attack.) Her group also is considering running ads in a Colorado district that was home to the 2012 Aurora movie theater massacre and which neighbors Columbine High School, where a 1999 rampage took place.

( Also on POLITICO: Gabby Giffords, Mark Kelly ALS challenge Wayne LaPierre)

Some backers are starting to cry foul.

On Friday, The Arizona Republic’s editorial page, which has previously endorsed Giffords, called the “Vicki” ad “base and vile.” The commercial, the newspaper said, put the murder “at McSally’s feet, as if she were responsible. A murder indictment implied. But, of course, McSally had nothing to do with” the death.

Giffords’ frustration with Washington’s failure to advance gun control legislation is playing out in her 2014 efforts.

In the days following the December 2012 Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting, where 26 people lost their lives, she testified before Congress, telling senators that “too many children are dying.” On the day the Senate voted down a bill to expand background checks, she stood behind President Barack Obama in the Rose Garden as he told lawmakers their rejection was “shameful.” She would later write that she was “furious” over the vote.

Pia Carusone, a senior adviser to the super PAC, said the bill’s failure had been a setback for the former congresswoman but that Giffords viewed it as only “the start of turning a really big ship around.”

Carusone, who was Giffords’ chief of staff at the time she was shot, said Giffords is deeply involved in the making of the ads. The former congresswoman has been sorting through polling and taking part in conference calls with strategists. She’s also played a key role in fundraising, helping the group to raise more than $17 million. Giffords hasn’t personally appeared in the commercials aired so far, though she may star in future ones, aides say.

Giffords’ advisers deny the ads go overboard. They say they’re conscious of the former congresswoman’s sensitive image and, as a result, have been working to ensure that the commercials, while hard-hitting, don’t stray from fact. Not all of them have been negative. The group has begun running an ad praising Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican from the Philadelphia suburbs, for supporting expanded background checks.

“We think about it in terms of making sure we never cross a line where it would be perceived as cheap, low blow or dirty,” Carusone said. “I don’t think you’ll see us ever do an ad that looks like a cheap attack ad.”

Republicans want to hit back, but it’s quite the conundrum going after Giffords.

Last week, McSally released a statement calling the ads “false and malicious” and “personally offensive,” revealing that she has been a victim of stalking. But the statement didn’t refer by name to Giffords or her super PAC, describing them only as “Congressman Barber’s political allies.”

Garcia also is pulling her punches. In a brief interview, she repeatedly declined to criticize the former congresswoman. Guinta didn’t respond to a request for comment.

It’s not the first time Republicans have struggled with how to deal with memories of the Arizona shooting. In 2012, the National Republican Congressional Committee undertook a research project to gauge how voters would respond to political attacks on Barber, who was shot twice in the attack.

Giffords’ bare-knuckled approach isn’t entirely out of character.

The Democrat proved herself to be a tough campaigner during her five years in the House. She wasn’t afraid to harshly attack her Republican foes in order to keep her hold on a swing district that hugs Arizona’s southern border.

In 2010, as Democrats across the country were swept away in a conservative wave, Giffords eked out a narrow, 4,156-vote victory over a GOP opponent, Jesse Kelly, by casting him as fringe and dangerous.

One particularly rough Giffords TV ad, which contended that Kelly would cut entitlement programs beloved by seniors, said the Republican was “more interested in greed and not interested in the rest of the population.”

“She was always an extremely pragmatic politician,” said Tom Zoellner, the author of a book about the Giffords shooting, “A Safeway in Arizona.” “She’s extremely smart, and she’s going to do what it takes to push her policy agenda.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story characterized The Arizona Republic’s editorial page as “left-leaning” and “typically liberal leaning.” The paper has endorsed members of both parties, including recent Republican candidates for president.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Daniella Diaz @ 09/23/2014 06:15 PM CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story characterized The Arizona Republic’s editorial page as “left-leaning” and “typically liberal leaning.” The paper has endorsed members of both parties, including recent Republican candidates for president.