PHOENIX — An ad by the National Republican Senatorial Committee is once again raising questions about Democratic candidate for Senate Mark Kelly’s ties to a controversial company, World View Enterprises. The Committee is investing $5.7 million the ad buy for Senator Martha McSally.
The NRSC ad highlights Kelly’s business ties with China.
Tencent, a Chinese tech company, has invested in World View Enterprises, a Tucson-based company which Kelly helped launch in 2014.
While Kelly has claimed to have dropped ties with World View, his daughter is still with the company according to her LinkedIn profile.
Kelly served as a strategic adviser to World View until launching his Senate campaign last year. He maintains a personal financial stake in the company of between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of non-public stock and $15,001 and $50,000 worth of stock options, according to the financial disclosure records Kelly was required to file in his Senate bid.
Additionally, Kelly’s campaign has accepted at least $5,000 from David Wallerstein, who serves as Tencent’s chief exploration officer, responsible for the company’s operations outside mainland China and overseeing business initiatives with multinational partners.
Kelly has faced scrutiny both in Arizona and nationally for investments made by Tencent, a surveillance arm of the Chinese Communist Party. The state-financed Chinese investor of a second company, Boom Technology, where Kelly served as an Advisory Board member, was also recently exposed.
“Mark Kelly spent years doing whatever it took to get rich, including allowing the Chinese Communist Party to invest in him and his companies,” said NRSC spokesperson Joanna Rodriguez. “His Chinese investors are responsible for putting not just U.S. national security, but also global security at risk all so he could make a quick buck.”
Earlier this month, McSally’s campaign released a TV ad targeting Kelly’s ties to China’s Communist party which have made him the butt of jokes over the years. McSally is clearly not joking though as the ad is a brutal attack on Kelly filled with video clips of his multi-level vitamin hawking past.
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