Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) is facing outrage after he used a family's tragedy to try to score political points with an attack ad.
According to reporting by The New York Times, Husted tried to attack his Democratic opponent, Sherrod Brown, with an ad that framed a fatal car crash, just outside Columbus, Ohio, as the result of immigration policies. Now, relatives of Lynnea, Luke, and Logan Soposki, the family who died in the April crash, are angered by Husted and his campaign.
"What we all want is to be able to grieve in peace and privacy, and for our family to not be used in such a classless way by a politician, especially without being consulted," Jesse Mallen, the brother of Lynnea Soposki, told The Times. "We certainly would not have said yes, but quite frankly, I think they knew that."
The ad opens by declaring that Sherrod Brown, a former senator who represented Ohio, "opened our borders to dangerous illegals. The consequences were deadly." It then shows photos of the semi-truck accident, the family, and the driver, Modou Ngom. The Times noted that the Ohio Department of Public Safety stated that the naturalized citizen entered the U.S. in the 1990s and "subsequently used multiple names and dates of birth to obtain state and federal identification."
According to The Times, Mallen reached out to the Husted campaign through email and certified mail to implore it to stop running the ad. He also posted on Facebook and Reddit, writing, "Our grief is not raw material for a campaign."
The ad was paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and approved by Husted's campaign, The Times reported.
According to reporting by The Daily Beast, the Soposki family photo used in the ad was taken by a friend who holds the copyright and did not consent to its use.
"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," relatives of the Soposki family told The Daily Beast. "Lynnea and Luke were not political symbols."