Anti-Abortion GOP Candidate Borrows Friend’s Wife and Daughters for Campaign Photo Op

Male GOP candidates who are worried about getting dragged down by the abortion issue in November are putting their wives front and center in their campaign ads. That’s hardly a new phenomenon — candidates have showcased the stereotypical [husband + wife + at least two children + probably a dog or two] family photo for ages — but the Republican angst about Dobbs is so acute, at least one candidate resorted to faking an entire family for his ads.

A Friday article at The New York Times, headlined “G.O.P. Candidates, Looking to Soften Their Image, Turn to Their Wives,” reported how “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.”

These GOP ads included anodyne images of “women in softly lit living rooms and pristine kitchens vouching for their husbands’ characters,” “a wholesome family gathering around the dining room table,” and moms “driving S.U.V.s with young children in the back seat as they stop for gas and groceries, talking about how their husbands are champions for their families, and can be champions for yours, too.”

So what do you do if you’re running for Congress with an R after your name but don’t have your own wife and kids?

If you’re Derrick Anderson, a candidate running in an open race for Virginia’s seventh congressional district, you borrow a wife and daughters from a friend.

From the Times report:

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. His campaign website says he lives with his dog and does not display any of the photos.

A spokesman for Mr. Anderson did not respond to a request for comment.

The footage has not yet been used in any ad. It can be found on Mr. Anderson’s official YouTube page and is also posted on a website paid for by the National Republican Campaign Committee, where the organization 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.

Can’t promote a childless dog dude in a party where the VP candidate won’t stop making creepy comments about childless cat ladies, after all.

Anderson does not seem to have any issue or policy statements on his campaign website, but in 2022, he praised the Supreme Court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, writing that “SCOTUS finally got it right” by overturning the Roe and Casey decisions.

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