GOP group releases racist ad promising Texas House candidate will 'crush' protesters
The Congressional Leadership Fund is spending $600,000 to get Morgan Luttrell elected.
A Republican super PAC with a history of racist ads has launched a large new ad campaign in support of Texas congressional hopeful Morgan Luttrell. The ad suggests that if elected, Luttrell would use his position of power to “crush” anti-racist protesters.
The Congressional Leadership Fund’s 30-second spot, released Friday, lauds Luttrell as someone who would “fight” President Joe Biden’s agenda, “finish the wall — no excuses,” and “back the blue.”
Over images of protesters, the narrator claims Luttrell will “crush the woke mob.” Republicans have taken to using the term “woke” as a racist dog whistle to refer to people who oppose racism and police brutality.
Luttrell, a former Navy SEAL who former President Donald Trump appointed to the Department of Energy, is seeking the GOP nomination to replace retiring Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX).
The Congressional Leadership Fund told Fox News it would spend $600,000 to air this ad on Texas broadcast and cable television. “Morgan Luttrell is an American hero and exactly the warrior we need in Washington to stop Joe Biden’s reckless policies from destroying our country,” Dan Conston, the fund’s president, told the network.
Conston’s group has a history of running false and racist campaign ads to help Republicans win House seats.
In 2018, during his first run for Congress, the conservative group attacked Rep. Antonio Delgado (D-NY) — a Harvard Law School graduate and Rhodes scholar — over his brief rap career, dishonestly calling Delgado’s music “a sonic blast of hateful rhetoric and anti-American views.”
Another ad that year — debunked by the Cincinnati Enquirer as “misleading” — attacked Ohio Democratic House candidate Aftab Pureval, an American-born child of immigrants from India and Tibet. The spot implied that because Pureval once worked for a law firm that had represented Libya — though he did no work on their behalf — he was somehow to blame for terrorism by the country’s late dictator, Muammar Gaddafi when Pureval was six years old. Pureval lost the election; in 2021, he was elected mayor of Cincinnati.
A third ad smeared Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) for having once served as a substitute English teacher at a Muslim high school in northern Virginia, baselessly suggesting this was proof that she supported terrorism.
Luttrell is one of several Republican candidates running in the solidly red district.
While the ad’s narrator said Luttrell will “defend our Texas way of life,” the super PAC that created the ad is based in Washington, D.C., according to Federal Election Commission filings.
A campaign spokesperson did not respond to an inquiry for this story.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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