Arizona’s Democrat Senate candidate confronting rare moniker: Son of a drug dealer

It is not often that any Senate candidate stands up before the media to admit anything. Rarer still is when the candidate addresses claims that his father is a convicted felon and a drug dealer.

That’s exactly what Arizona Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego did last week after an attack from his Republican opponent suggesting he was controlled by the cartels. 

“He will never confront the cartels; he is controlled by them. He has close family members who are drug traffickers,” candidate Kari Lake said earlier this month in an blunderbuss attack, forcing Gallego to address the issue, and admitted the essence of the allegations are true. 

“She’s raising it because my father, who abandoned my family, is a convicted drug dealer,” Gallego said with visible emotion at a press conference. “It’s a stain that our family has had to carry. This is why my mom, my sisters and myself have worked our entire life to really live the American Dream and to serve and honor this country despite what he has done.”

“But this is who Kari Lake is. She attacks families when she’s losing, because she is. She’s a pathetic loser. We saw that happen with the McCain family,” Gallego added. 

Although Jose Marinelarena, Gallego’s father is a convicted drug dealer, Lake presented no evidence that he or his father are connected in any way to the drug cartels in Mexico, from where Gallego emigrated as a teenager. 

Court documents

Court documents from Gallego’s hometown of Chicago may still present a problem for the Democratic candidate.

Details in the filings from Marinelarena’s 1995 drug arrest and trial appear to contradict with Gallego’s story about his parent’s divorce, the timeline of and reasons for his father’s drug dealing.

In his memoir, “They Called Us ‘Lucky': The Life and Afterlife of the Iraq War's Hardest Hit Unit,” Gallego told the story of his early life and didn't shy away from his father’s criminal history. 

“Around junior high, my mom and dad divorced. My mom, myself, and my three sisters moved to an area just south of Chicago, an apartment so tiny that I slept on the floor of the living room rather than a bed….My father’s construction business had gone bust,” Gallego wrote. 

“I found out later that he and one of his cousins had begun dabbling in the drug trade...Eventually my father was busted and found guilty of felony possession with intent to sell cocaine and marijuana,” he wrote. Gallego has never concealed his father’s criminal history, even labeling him as a convicted felon. But, the court documents suggest a timeline that doesn’t line up with the senate candidate’s account of events. 

In 1995, several criminal complaints were filed against one Jose Marinelarena whose characteristics match descriptions provided by Gallego about his father. They show Marinelarena was charged with possession and intent to sell cocaine, marijuana and possession of two illegal firearms one without a valid registration and the other without a serial number. 

The records show an officer with the Chicago Organized Crime Narcotics Unit received a tip from a confidential informant that he had visited Marinelarena in his apartment in order to purchase cocaine. 

“Jose let them into the kitchen area of the apartment, went to the kitchen cabinet and removed five large zip lock freezer bags; each containing approx: six other plastic bags of baseball size filled with a white rock substance,” the complaint for a search warrant obtained by Just the News reads. 

After the informant took a small sample of the cocaine, Marinelarena reportedly said “that this was pure stuff,” according to the complaint. 

After searching his apartment, Chicago police found 15 grams of cocaine with an estimated value of $943.65 and 80,000 grams of marijuana with an estimated value of $480,800.00 according to the court documents. 

During the search, police also found two illegal firearms, one 38 F.I.E. revolver without a valid registration and a 32 caliber H&R revolver with no serial number. 

Police arrested Marinelarena during the search and he “made an oral admission as to ownership of the above recovered contraband,” the arrest report reads. 

The documents show that Marinelarena entered a guilty plea in in late 1996 and was sentenced to a 30-months probation, resulting in a felony record. It is unclear if he maintained his employment after his conviction. 

You can read the court documents here:

Details don't match up

Aside from the facts about his father's arrest and conviction, the court documents also provide some details that appear to conflict with Gallego’s account of life with his father. 

Though Gallego appeared to suggest his parents were divorced at the time of his arrest in his memoir, the court records show Marinelarena’s lawyer cited his marriage and four kids in a filing arguing for a lower bail, suggesting his client had some role in taking care of the kids at the time and was still married to Gallego’s mother.

“That the defendant is 40 years old, married, with four minor children; that the defendant is a lawful permanent resident having resided in the United States since 1968, in the Chicago area,” the filing reads.  Additionally, the same filing shows Marinelarena was employed as a union carpenter and making a wage at the time of his arrest, contrary to Gallego’s claims that his construction business was suffering.  “[The] defendant is employed full time as a union carpenter, earning approximately $720.00 per week,” it reads. 

The Gallego senate campaign did not respond to an email request for comment about the apparent discrepancies. 

No relationship with father

Gallego maintains that he does not have a relationship with his father and has expressed anger in the past about his attempts to reconnect. After Gallego joined the Marine Corps in 2000, Marinelarena attended his bootcamp graduation ceremony. 

"Seeing him at the graduation enraged me, and still does," Gallego wrote in his book. "I felt as if he’d come to steal some portion of my achievement, as if he was responsible for all the work I’d done to get this far. ... I avoided him, staying close to my mom and sisters, avoiding any possibility of contact. I’ve barely heard from him since.”

Gallego even changed his last name after he leaving the marines from Marinelarena to Gallego, his mother’s maiden name. He explained in his book that he "didn’t want to be associated with my father, even symbolically.” 

He faced a lawsuit during his 2014 run for congress over the name change and explained that he took his mother’s name to honor her for raising him as a single mother. 

Records suggest Marinelarena had very few run-ins with the law after his 1995 drug arrest and conviction until recently. Earlier this year he was again arrested by the Chicago Police Department and charged with battery, according to a public arrest record. 

The name and age of the defendant, Jose Marinelarena match with information contained in the court documents reviewed by Just the News.