Vulnerable House Republicans Caught Using Fake Families, Spouses, and Significant Others As Props to Hide Their Anti-Abortion Extremism

Across the country, Republicans running for competitive House seats are doing everything they can to camouflage their anti-women, anti-abortion, and anti-freedom agenda, according to new reporting from The New York Times.

Vulnerable House Republicans Brandon Williams and Don Bacon and far-right candidate Joe Kent have each "deployed their wives" in recent ads to combat their "politically toxic," anti-abortion crusade - including endorsing a national abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest, or a woman's life.

In an even more bizarre case of Republican hypocrisy, Derrick Anderson, the party's candidate for Virginia's 7th Congressional District, posed with a fake family.

No matter how they spin it, one thing remains clear: the House Republican Caucus "simply lacks empathy for women."

Read more from The New York Times below.

NYT: G.O.P. Candidates, Looking to Soften Their Image, Turn to Their Wives
Annie Karni and Catie Edmondson | September 27, 2024

• In the final, critical weeks in competitive congressional races, male Republicans struggling to appeal to female voters concerned about their records on reproductive rights are unleashing their spouses to make the pitch on their behalf.

• The campaign of Derrick Anderson, a former Army Green Beret who is running in a competitive race for an open seat in Virginia's Seventh District, has posted footage of him posing with a woman and her three daughters in what looks like a photo that might be used for an annual holiday card. In another scene filmed for potential use in a campaign ad, Mr. Anderson is seated around the dining room table with the same woman and three girls, chatting and smiling.

• But the people are not relatives. They are the wife and children of a longtime friend. Mr. Anderson, who announced this month that he was engaged, does not have any children of his own.

• The proliferation of women and families in campaigns this season underscores the importance for Republican candidates to be able to show off a family-friendly, relatable side to voters - especially women, who increasingly say the issue of abortion is central to their decision this fall.

• In multiple election cycles since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the issues of abortion and reproductive rights have been politically toxic for Republican candidates. Some are doing little to combat the impression that their party simply lacks empathy for women.

• So, from New York to Washington State, wives and other family members have taken center stage in ads.

• Standing alone in her kitchen, Stephanie Williams speaks directly to the camera and delivers a message of concern about her husband, Representative Brandon Williams of New York, a vulnerable Republican running to keep his seat.

• Mr. Kent, a retired Green Beret and combat veteran who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and supported Jan. 6 defendants, appears at the end of the commercial, helping to unload the grocery bags. In attack ads, Democrats are focusing on Mr. Kent's past support for a national abortion ban when he ran for Congress in 2022.

• Representative Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who represents a district President Biden won by six points in 2020, put his wife, Angie, on the air after Democrats ran an ad attacking him for cosponsoring a national abortion ban.