An anti-abortion Republican faked an entire family for ads in his competitive congressional contest.
Derrick Anderson, a candidate running in an open race for Virginia’s seventh congressional district, has posted photos of himself with a woman and three girls. He also reportedly filmed a scene with the woman and the girls sitting around a dinner table talking and smiling, according to a report from the New York Times.
The dinner table scene hasn’t been used in an ad yet but it can be found on Anderson’s official YouTube page and is also posted on a website paid for by the National Republican Campaign Committee.
The committee “provides resources for independent outside groups that are not allowed to communicate directly with campaigns but can use the information posted there to guide their paid media strategy,” NYT reported.
But, the woman is not Anderson’s wife and the children are not his, he borrowed them from a longtime friend.
Anderson, who announced this month that he was engaged, is childless and lives with his dog.
In 2022, Anderson praised the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe, saying at the time that the court “finally got it right.”
“SCOTUS finally got it right, and overturned a 50 year decision of federalizing abortions,” he wrote. “As Justice Alito stated, the lack of a constitutional reference to abortion requires Roe and Casey to be overturned.”
According to the report, several male Republican candidates have turned to their wives to help soften their image with women amid the abortion issue and disparaging comments about women coming from the top of the GOP ticket.
Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance has come under fire for past comments calling women without biological children “childless cat ladies” with “no direct stake” in America.
Vance has also called for tax penalties for people without children and even suggested giving extra votes to people with children.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is an adjudicated rapist who was also found guilty on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to an adult film star to hide his extramarital affair.
