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PHOENIX — Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas’ campaign is pressuring local radio stations to pull an independent ad that says he was responsible for the arrest of two newspaper executives last year.

The ad supporting Thomas opponent Tim Nelson has run on at least six Phoenix-area radio stations in recent days, and continued to be broadcast on at least one on Wednesday morning. The air time was paid for by a group that is not affiliated with Nelson’s campaign.

The ad also accuses Thomas of using communist-style police tactics.

Thomas’ campaign released an affidavit signed by a deputy chief of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday in which David Hendershott wrote that he ordered the arrests of two Phoenix New Times newspaper executives on Oct 17, 2007. He said he did not consult Thomas or special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik beforehand.

Hendershott said he “made the decision based on good, sufficient and legal cause to order the arrests of Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin.”

The affidavit is the first admission of who ordered the arrests.

Lacey and Larkin were arrested after they violated a judge’s order not to make public a subpoena requesting information about the paper’s online readers. Thomas had appointed Wilenchik to conduct an investigation of New Times after it ran a series of stories in 2004 that were critical of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The public outcry over the arrests was so great that Thomas fired Wilenchik as special prosecutor and dropped the charges against Lacey and Larkin.

Nelson’s campaign manager said the Democratic challenger had no problem with the ad, which was paid for by a group called Arizonans for Responsible Law Enforcement.

“It may not be exactly phrasing we would have used, but we’re certainly not going to renounce it,” campaign manager Josh Kilroy said.