Childless GOP Candidate Borrows Friend’s Wife and Kids for Photo Ops
Republicans have taken umbrage with the notion that they’re weird — specifically when it comes to accusations that they’re weird about people (usually women) who don’t have children.
The sentiment in Republican politics that childless Americans are — as JD Vance put it — disorienting and disturbing has become so prevalent that one GOP candidate has taken to borrowing his friends’ wife and children for photo ops.
According to a Friday report from The New York Times, Derrick Anderson — a former Green Beret running for the House of Representatives in Virginia — has repeatedly featured a woman and her three daughters in campaign materials.
One photo features the group posing close together in an image that you could probably find framed on a grandmother’s mantle, the type of photo that your parents made your uncle with a DSLR camera take because “we never get nice pictures together.”
https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1839759803729752271
In one campaign video, Anderson is seen walking side-by-side with the same woman. In another video, which was featured on the National Republican Campaign Committee’s website and on his YouTube channel, shows Anderson speaking to the woman and the three girls while seated in a home dining room.
According to the Times, the woman and girls are “the wife and children of a longtime friend.” Anderson’s campaign website does not mention a wife or children, but notes that he “lives in Spotsylvania County with his dog, Ranger, a Dalmatian.” The Republican candidate recently revealed on social media that he is engaged to his girlfriend, Maggie, and has posted pictures of her — she is decidedly not the woman featured in the photos and videos.
A spokesperson for Anderson told the Times that “Derrick’s opponent and every other candidate in America are in similar pictures and video with supporters of all kinds,” adding that the content in question simply featured “with female supporters and their kids.”
It’s weird, but then again so is the rest of the party.
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