By Lee Roper
A grieving family’s request that Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) stop running an ad blaming Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown for their relatives’ death in a fatal crash appears to have landed on deaf ears.
In April, Luke and Lynnea Soposki, along with their 1-year-old child, died in a car crash in Ohio. Modou Ngom, an immigrant, was driving the semi-truck that hit a car from behind, leading to a multi-car crash, with some vehicles catching on fire. Ngom has been charged with vehicular homicide related to the crash.
Husted is now using the tragedy in an ad to blame Brown for the crash, claiming that he “opened our borders to dangerous illegals” and that, “because of him, Ohioans paid the price.” Husted did not ask the victims’ family for their permission.
Lynnea Soposki’s brother, Jesse Mallen, told HuffPost that the family was not asked if the names and faces of the deceased could be shown in the ad, and they’d privately asked Husted’s campaign to take the ad down but so far have gotten no response from the Republican.
“The lack of empathy for a grieving family is pretty shocking,” Mallen said, adding that “Lynnea was my sister, and I don’t want to see her face being tossed in disgusting ads like that.”
Mallen has been forced to take his complaint public in hopes of pressuring Husted and his camp to pull the ad from TV and YouTube after they ignored his multiple private pleas to do so.
“This is not a statement about immigration policy, and we are not making one for any party or candidate. It is a statement about our family. Lynnea and Luke were not political symbols,” Mallen wrote in a Facebook post. “Our grief is not raw material for a campaign, and their images are not public property to repurpose for anyone’s advantage.”
The ad is not only hurtful to the victims’ family, but it’s also grossly misleading.
It shows an image of a border wall along with images of Brown and former President Joe Biden to suggest that recent Democratic immigration policies led to Ngom entering the country. But Ngom entered the U.S. in the 1990s, so for any legislation to have affected his entry, it would’ve had to be enacted before then.
Pressed for comment on the timeline by FactCheck.org, the National Republican Senatorial Committee pointed to a vote that then-House Rep. Brown took against an immigration enforcement bill in 1996, even though he voted in favor of its final passage as part of a larger “omnibus” bill that then-President Bill Clinton signed into law.
The contest between Husted and Brown is a crucial one that could determine which party controls the Senate.
Husted is running for a full term after being appointed to serve the remainder of now-Vice President JD Vance’s Senate term in 2024. Recent polls show Brown slightly ahead in the matchup. The non-partisan election handicapper, Cook Political Report, characterizes the race as a ‘toss-up.’
