Dan Nowicki

The Republic | azcentral.com

The political fusillade aimed at first-term Sen. Jeff Flake is intensifying after his vote to confirm Betsy DeVos as President Donald Trump's education secretary. But there are also shots coming from other directions.

Flake, R-Ariz., a vocal GOP Trump critic during last year's presidential campaign, has become a target of anti-Trump activists by voting, so far, to confirm all of Trump's nominees, including DeVos, who survived an unprecedented 50-50 tie that was broken by Vice President Mike Pence.

Various groups have been pressuring Flake to reject various Trump picks, from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin to Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Anti-Trump constituents have kept his voicemail boxes perpetually full. Liberal activists are clamoring for Flake to hold an in-person town-hall meeting in Arizona.

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National Democrats view Flake, who is up for re-election next year, as one of the two most vulnerable Republican senators in 2018 (with Dean Heller of Nevada the other one). They believe his vote for DeVos will come back to haunt him, especially given the outcry from many Arizona voters, and have been hitting him hard on it.

“Our children deserve better than Betsy DeVos, and simply put, they deserve much better than Jeff Flake," Enrique Gutierrez, Arizona Democratic Party spokesman, said in a written statement after the DeVos vote. "If he’s going to ignore the plea of thousands of hardworking Arizonans in opposition to DeVos, he shouldn’t be surprised next year when they kick him out of office.”

Flake, a libertarian-leaning Republican, has long been in philosophical alignment with DeVos on "school choice" issues.

He also is unequivocally supportive of Gorsuch.

"I appreciate those who call in," Flake told The Arizona Republic on Wednesday. "We had a lot of calls, obviously, on the DeVos issue. This (the Supreme Court nomination) hasn't ramped up yet, but I assume it will coming up. I certainly take their concerns to heart, but most voters, when they elected me, understood my philosophy and would expect me to be supportive of a good judge like this."

MORE: Flake praises nominee Gorsuch after meeting

The attacks on Flake aren't just coming from Democrats and liberal activists.

An anti-immigration group has launched an television ad in Arizona suggesting that Flake, a longtime immigration-reform supporter, might undermine Trump's anti-illegal-immigration agenda.

Though not a campaign ad, Californians for Population Stabilization, based in Santa Barbara, takes aim at Flake, a freshman senator, as his 2018 re-election cycle gets going.

Flake already has one Trump-style opponent in his 2018 GOP primary: former state Sen. Kelli Ward, the Lake Havasu City Republican who lost her 2016 primary challenge to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Last year, Trump attacked Flake as "a very weak and ineffective senator." For his part, Flake criticized the tone and tenor of Trump's campaign and, specifically, Trump's signature proposal to erect a border wall and force Mexico to pay for it.

The TV ad attacks Flake for his work with McCain and others on the bipartisan 2013 "Gang of Eight" immigration bill, which Trump allegedly told a group of senators that he would be willing to consider. However, the White House quickly shot down that suggestion. Sessions, the senator from Alabama who now is Trump's attorney general, fiercely fought the Gang of Eight's legislation, which attempted to balance a massive investment in border security with a pathway to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants who have settled in the United States and an updated visa system for future foreign workers.

"Senator Jeff Flake says he's ready to work with President Trump on immigration. Really?" the 30-second TV spot's narrator says. "This is the same Jeff Flake who sponsored the 'Gang of Eight' bill to give amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. The same Jeff Flake who pushed for more foreign workers to take American jobs. The same Jeff Flake who opposed mandatory jail time for illegal aliens that repeatedly sneak across our border.

"The same Jeff Flake ready to work with President Trump? We'll see about that."

Asked about the ad, Flake dismissed it as an attempt by the California group to "get some earned media," or free publicity from news media who give additional exposure to the commercial's message. According to GOP operatives who track advertising spending, the TV buy is relatively small: $24,200 on broadcast TV and $18,546 on cable, where it will only appear on Fox News.

"I think people understand that on immigration there are some areas that I'll be with Trump on and some areas where I won't," Flake said.

If that weren't enough, Flake has also angered organized labor by introducing a bill that would suspend the Davis-Bacon Act's prevailing-wage requirements for U.S. highway construction contracts to save money, particularly if the Trump administration goes through with a plan to dramatically increase spending on domestic infrastructure.

"When money is wasted on inflated labor costs under the Davis-Bacon Act, it results in fewer improvements to Arizona’s infrastructure and fewer jobs for Arizona’s construction workers," Flake said in a written statement last month when he introduced the bill. "By suspending onerous prevailing wage provisions on all federal highway construction projects, the TIRE (Transportation Investment Recalibration to Equality) Act will ensure that tax dollars go toward projects and jobs, not overpriced union labor contracts."

A group called Rebuild USA recently started running radio and print ads against Flake in Arizona. The organization describes itself as "committed to improving and modernizing America’s crumbling infrastructure while creating good-paying jobs for American workers."

In the radio ad, a father must break it to his young son that he won't be able to afford to take him to see a movie and get ice cream for his birthday this year.

"When the politicians in Washington mess up, it hurts families here in Arizona," the ad's narrator said. "And Senator Jeff Flake has messed up, big time. His Senate Bill 195 will cut wages of Arizona construction workers, many of them military veterans who risked their lives for our country. Washington, D.C., might be 2,000 miles away, but what happens there can hurt real people in Arizona."

Nowicki is The Republic's national political reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @dannowicki and on his official Facebook page.