To say Tom Tancredo stirred things up in Colorado by entering the governor’s race would be an understatement. The former congressman and one-time presidential candidate decided to run on the American Constitution Party ticket, in protest to the Republican nominee, Dan Maes.
But Tancredo, whose primary issue of late has been illegal immigration, has stirred things up again with a new ad that features an emotional story about Marten Kudlis – a three-year old boy who was killed when an illegal immigrant crashed through the front window of a Baskin Robbins.
The 30-second ad, titled “Bad Policies Kill People,” is narrated by Marten’s father. In it, he blames his son’s death on the illegal immigrant never being deported because Denver is a sanctuary city. The mayor of Denver also happens to be the Democratic nominee for governor, John Hickenlooper.
“I am sending you Marten’s picture, Mr. Mayor,” says the father. “Try to sleep at night knowing your policy contributed to his death.”
Although the Hickenlooper campaign responded calling the ad “baseless and false,” the Colorado Immigrants Rights Coalition (CIRC) – a membership-based coalition founded to “improve the lives of immigrants and refugees in Colorado and the United States – is now speaking out as well.
A spokesperson for CIRC, Alan Kaplan, told The Daily Caller that though human-interest stories are generally acceptable, they can also be distorted to produce the wrong conclusions.
“While no candidate is above using a good human interest story to push their candidacy along, most of them at least try and fact-check their stories,” said Kaplan. “While it is a tragedy that Mr. Kudlis’ son was killed by a drunk driver with no legal status, there is absolutely no evidence showing that any local, state or federal policy would have been able to flag the culprit.”
Kaplan continued by saying, “To call Denver a sanctuary city is to deny years of enforcement based policies and some of the toughest state immigration laws in the country. We hope that all the candidates in this race commit to working for just and fair immigration reform, which can only happen on the Federal level through comprehensive immigration reform.”
The latest Rasmussen poll has Tancredo within four points of Hickenlooper, with 38 percent of likely voters supporting his candidacy. Republican candidate Maes is trailing far behind at 12 percent.
WATCH: Tancredo’s “Bad Policies Kill People” ad