With early balloting for Phoenix mayor just a week away, police and firefighter unions are out with an ad attacking front runner Kate Gallego.

This, because she opposed raising property taxes by nearly 20 percent.

Oh, the horror.

Of course, it’s not surprising that public safety unions would attack Gallego. The Arizona Police Association, the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police and the Professional Fire Fighters of Arizona all are backing Glendale firefighter Daniel Valenzuela in the March 12 runoff for Phoenix mayor.

What is surprising – to me, at least?

That police officers and firefighters would be so desperate to get their guy elected that they would play fast and loose with facts.

The ad comes courtesy of Moving Phoenix Forward, an independent campaign funded by public safety groups to get Valenzuela elected. In the ad, several Phoenix police and firefighters talk about the need for more funding for public safety.

Then a police officer says: “Kate Gallego voted against funding.”

Did she?

Here's what happened

A consultant to Moving Phoenix Forward says the ad refers to a 2016 vote in which then-Councilwoman Gallego voted against a boosting property taxes to avoid cuts to city services.

That’s true. Gallego did vote against sticking the average Phoenix property owner with a $51 tax increase.

It’s just not the whole story.

In fact, Gallego voted in May 2016 for a $1.22 billion budget that included the projected $37 million to be raised by the property tax hike. But she called for raising the revenue elsewhere.

Then in July 2016, she voted against the tax increase, saying it would hurt fixed-income residents and again she called for finding the $37 million elsewhere.

“While I have supported the city budget, from the beginning I made it clear that we should pay for this budget with a funding mechanism that maximizes the value for our residents and protects against a backdoor tax increase to subsidize new sports facilities for millionaires and billionaires," Gallego said.

In other words, she didn’t “vote against funding” for public safety.

She just voted against forcing the average homeowner to pony up an added $51 a year, preferring instead to pull funds from the Sports Facilities Fund – the one used to build a hotel and more recently, to upgrade Talking Stick Resort Arena.

A $400k campaign to mislead voters?

Yet police and firefighters are spending $400,000 to let Phoenix voters know that Gallego “voted against funding” for public safety.

Moving Phoenix Forward spokesman David Leibowitz told me the ad is "precisely accurate."

"She did in fact vote no on funding," he said. "I suppose in your words we should have done a commercial that was 39 seconds long ... but in a 30-second commercial, it very clearly makes the point that she voted no on funding."

It also very clearly makes the point that police and firefighter groups will say whatever it takes to get Valenzuela elected and they are spending $400,000 to snooker voters into believing that Gallego wanted to take an ax to public safety.

In a Jan. 31 press release announcing the ad, Moving Phoenix Forward pronounces the election “a dead heat once likely voters learn the facts.”

Then they spent $400,000 distorting those facts.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com.