As Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance faces continued controversy over his outrageous claim that “childless cat ladies” are running the country, a childless, single man running for one of Virginia’s U.S. House seats — who lives alone with his dog — has enlisted a woman and her children to pose as his family.
Derrick Anderson, a former Green Beret running for an open seat in Virginia’s Seventh District, posted footage to his YouTube channel posing with a woman and her three daughters in what looks like “a photo that might be used for an annual holiday card,” according to The New York Times.
Another scene, filmed for potential use in a campaign ad, pictured Anderson seated at a dining room table with the same woman and three girls, chatting and smiling.
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The “holiday” snap was posted on the National Republican Campaign Committee website to promote Anderson’s campaign, and was included in a video on his campaign’s YouTube account.
Anderson’s “wife and children” were borrowed from a friend. He posed with another young girl that might have been his daughter in another mailing.
The candidate’s duplicitous strategy seems aimed at creating the image of a family man aligned with the anti-abortion message that he and fellow Republicans are obsessed with.
Anderson does not have children of his own and is unmarried, but anyone quickly glancing at the photos would likely assume they’re his own wife and kids.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v Wade in 2022, Anderson celebrated the ruling, posting to Twitter that the court “finally got it right” and “overturned a 50 year decision of federalizing abortions.”
Earlier this month, he posted video to X campaigning on a deserted suburban street with a woman named “Maggie” that he claimed was his “fiancé.”
Anderson lives at home alone with his dog, according to his campaign website.
The New York Times story recorded how GOP candidates are turning to their wives to “soften their images,” even as they go after women’s reproductive freedoms.
Anodyne images of “women in softly lit living rooms and pristine kitchens vouching for their husbands’ characters,” and moms “driving S.U.V.s with young children in the back seat as they stop for gas and groceries” push an image of the candidates as “champions for their families” who “can be champions for yours, too”, even as they deny women’s bodily autonomy.
At a candidate forum last week, Anderson refused to answer whether or not Virginia women should have the right to make decisions about their own bodies. Asked repeatedly whether he “supports a woman’s right to choose”, Anderson would only say that “each state is going to have to make a determination that best fits their states.”
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