House Democrats need to flip just four seats to take the chamber’s majority in November, and super PACs are going all out on the airwaves in battleground districts, blasting Republicans over abortion and reproductive rights in ads.
Some of the ads feature doctors speaking passionately about abortion and saying that Republican candidates shouldn’t represent “us” or “our” communities in Congress. But in at least four instances, House Majority PAC, a super PAC aligned with House Democratic leadership, featured Republican-blasting doctors in their ads who did not live in the district where they were advertising.
In two of the ads, which target voters in New Mexico’s 2nd District and Arizona’s 6th District, the doctors blame Republicans for working to restrict access to abortions, but do not explicitly mention these Republicans representing them.
In two other ads, one in Colorado’s 8th District and one in Oregon’s 5th District, the doctors featured in House Majority PAC’s ads did argue that Colorado GOP state Rep. Gabe Evans “should never represent us in Congress” and that “our future can’t be trusted with [GOP Rep.] Lori Chavez DeRemer” in Oregon, making a more direct reference to Republicans who could be representing those districts.
Dr. Emily Schneider, an OB-GYN associate professor of clinical practice at the University of Colorado, who spoke in the ad against Evans, lives in Colorado’ 6th District, not the 8th District, according to publicly available property records.
And Dr. Michelle Berlin-Lowe, the obstetrician-gynecologist who spoke against Chavez-DeRemer, lives in Oregon’s 1st District, not the battleground 5th, according to publicly available property records.
In the two ads targeting New Mexico and Arizona voters, Dr. Destinie Marquez, an OB-GYN at the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, spoke against former GOP Rep. Yvette Herrell, telling viewers, “As a doctor, I took an oath to help anyone that needs it. But Yvette Herrell believes that women who are victims don’t deserve care.”
Marquez lives in New Mexico’s 1st District, not the 2nd, and attended President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address to Congress this year as a guest of her congresswoman, Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury.
In the ad targeting voters in Arizona’s 6th District, where GOP Rep. Juan Ciscomani is running for re-election against former state Sen. Kirsten Engel, Dr. Sigrid Williams told viewers, “When a politician like Juan Ciscomani celebrates the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we have to call him out … Keep the state out of our personal business. Get Juan Ciscomani out of Congress.”
According to publicly available property records, Williams lives in Arizona’s 7th District, not the 6th, which Ciscomani represents.
The path to the House majority runs through all four of the districts where these ads ran. All four are rated as “toss-up” races by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. And, the races in all four districts were decided by 2 percentage points or less in the 2022 midterm elections.
And the campaigns illustrate how abortion has become a major winning issue for Democrats, especially since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the national right to an abortion in 2022. Since then, both doctors and patients have often become key personal messengers on abortion for Democrats.
Following the 2022 midterm elections, a majority of voters in NBC News exit polls said they trusted Democrats, more than Republicans, on the issue of abortion. Democrats ended up outperforming expectations in the House and maintaining control of the Senate that year.
But Republicans blasted House Majority PAC over the ads, calling them misleading and accusing the group of spreading falsehoods about GOP incumbents and candidates.
“After wrecking the economy and opening the border to violent criminals and drugs, extreme House Democrats are grasping at straws by spreading falsehoods about Republicans’ reasonable position on women’s healthcare. But here’s what’s even more egregious: [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries’ super PAC can’t even find local doctors willing to regurgitate their lies,” Will Reinert, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, told NBC News.
Marquez, Williams and Berlin-Lowe did not respond to requests for comment.
In a text to NBC News, Schneider confirmed that she lived in Colorado’s 6th District, not the 8th, where Evans is running.
“I take care of patients from all over so I did it because my patients live in every district,” Schneider added.
C.J. Warnke, House Majority PAC’s communications director, told NBC News in a statement, “Unfortunately, Republicans like Juan Ciscomani, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Yvette Herrell, and Gabe Evans have been relentless in their pursuit to ban abortion nationwide. Their efforts to endanger women and punish doctors would affect everyone everywhere, and HMP will continue to inform voters of their extremist agenda throughout the fall.”
This is not the first time this cycle that House campaign ads on both sides of the aisle — and the characters they include — have been called out as misleading.
Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC aligned with House Republican leadership, also came under fire for a campaign ad last month that featured a Republican staffer bashing Democratic congressional candidate Janelle Bynum in Oregon’s 5th District.
The staffer in the ad now lives in the state’s 4th District.
In Pennsylvania’s 7th District, another competitive race rated a “toss-up” by the Cook Political Report, HMP ran an ad featuring Jeff Potts, who wore a police badge and claimed, “We’re fighting fentanyl in our communities and [Democratic Rep.] Susan Wild has our back.”
Potts went on to speak about Wild’s support for law enforcement at various levels and agencies. But the New York Post later reported that Potts was not a police officer and that the badge he wore was fake.
Potts, the Post reported, is an “auxiliary officer” with limited policing power and no authority to arrest individuals.
And, in New Mexico’s 2nd District, Luma County Sheriff Mike Eby blasted the group for using a photo of him with Vasquez in a campaign ad.
“Recently, Democrat Congressman Gabe Vasquez and his Washington, D.C. allies used a photo of me in a political ad … I did not give my consent for my photo to be used and I do not support Gabe Vasquez for Congress, nor have I ever supported him,” Eby said in a video.
The ad featured former Luna County Sheriff Raymond Cobos speaking in favor of Vasquez.
And The New York Times last week reported that former Army Green Beret Derrick Anderson, a Republican candidate in Virginia, had posted footage online of him posing alongside a woman and three children who were not members of his family.
The footage included a photo of Anderson smiling alongside the family and video of the group sitting around a dining room table. The footage, however, has so far not been used in paid campaign advertising.
