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What is with all these attack ads in Arizona?

It's election season, and that means a slew of nasty attack ads on Arizona airwaves.

Arizona's television commercial breaks are rife with political advertisements.

We have accusations of lying, of course, but there's also been mention of treason, mushroom cloud-embossed flyers and one politician has seen his own siblings campaign against him.

Chuck Coghlin is a political consultant who produces attack ads for both sides. He says they're so prevalent simply because they work.

"All of us are fallen creatures, right? We all have some problems in our life," Coghlin said.

But if you think it's the candidates who are paying for these ads, or in some cases even approving them, you'd be wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court actually played a hand in starting this whole mess.

"Citizens United, the Supreme Court case, legalized C-4 spending, anonymous political speech, essentially," Coghlin said. "There's whole industries of consultants that get hired these days to go vet people and they get paid a lot of money to find out everything about a person."

We may say we don't like the ads, but we do pay attention. And these days, with social media, TV, radio and print, it's easier than ever to get those messages out.

And you know that little line at the bottom of the ad? You'll probably never know who's actually behind them.

Coghlin says it's actually "these third-party groups on both the left and the right that are creating most of the narrative that we're listening to these days."

Fortunately for Arizona news consumers, it'll all be done after next Tuesday's election.

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