Ads Hit Dems In Ohio, PA Senate Races Over Anti-Catholic Bigotry

A conservative super PAC expanded its western state ad campaign hitting Democrats over anti-Catholic bigotry to target incumbent Senate candidates in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Last week, the group Frontiers of Freedom Action began to target Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Bob Casey, D-Penn., with two-minute ads aired in both English and Spanish highlighting lawmakers’ extremism against religious liberty.

“Latino-Americans remember how evil governments in Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela hated the church and Catholics and how they persecuted priests, nuns, and laypeople,” the narrator says in each ad. “Latino-Americans know from history that this must not happen here in America.”

The commercial campaigns outlining the Democrats’ record supporting abortion on-demand and the government persecution of Catholics were previously launched across a trio of western states where Republicans are hoping to flip Senate seats in Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. Each ad amplified Democrat Senate candidates’ previous support for Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who sought to coerce the Little Sisters of the Poor into providing contraception. The ads also highlighted Democrats’ support for the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would have protected newborns who survived abortion.

We had a tremendous response to both our Hispanic-language and English-language ads in the largest nightly news slots in Phoenix, where viewers sometimes saw our two-minute ad twice in the same news hour,” said George Landrith, the president of the group behind the ads. in a press release.

“There are 60,000 Hispanics in Columbus, where we are advertising in Ohio, and half a million in Philadelphia, where we are on Spanish TV,” Landrith added. “We think Hispanic voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as Catholic voters, will be outraged by the records of the two incumbents in failing to respond to anti-Catholic bigotry in their party.”

Democrats are running far tighter races to maintain their Senate seats in Ohio and Pennsylvania than out west. While Republicans are polling behind by nearly double digits across in Nevada and New Mexico, Sens. Casey and Brown are only ahead by nearly 5 and 4 points, respectively, in RealClearPolitics’ aggregate of surveys.

“Brown is particularly vulnerable because he’s trying to separate himself from the extremist left-wing record he has established and trying to say he’s not going to do that anymore,” Landrith said. The longtime Ohio lawmaker is currently running to save his seat in the upper chamber among voters who overwhelmingly voted to elect former President Donald Trump twice.

“Meanwhile, Casey, who was once pro-life and has long identified as a Catholic, has all the same problems that Brown and the other candidates have with their party’s record of anti-Catholic bigotry and his failure to stand up to it or denounce it,” Landrith said.

Trump carried Pennsylvania by a little more than 1 point in 2016, but lost the state by the same margin last cycle.

Watch the ads in English here:

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.