Josh Mandel Goes After Martin Luther King’s Daughter for Objecting to His Namedropping Civil Rights Icon in Campaign Ad

Ken MeyerApr 6th, 2022, 1:12 pm
 

Ohio Republican Senate candidate Josh Mandel took on Martin Luther King Jr’s daughter after she called him out for using her father’s name to score political points.

Following a debate in which he threatened one of his Republican primary opponents, Mandel released a campaign ad on Tuesday that shows him walking on Edmund Pettus Bridge. The bridge is famously known as the site of “Bloody Sunday” when Alabama State troopers attacked King and other civil rights activists in 1965 as they marched from Selma to Montgomery.

“Martin Luther King marched right here so skin color wouldn’t matter,” Mandel said. “There’s nothing racist about stopping Critical Race Theory and loving America.”

The ad has come under controversy, due to questions about whether Mandel’s campaign photoshopped him into a picture of himself standing next to African American soldiers during his military service in Iraq. Meanwhile, Mandel got on Twitter to push the video, tagged Bernice King, and said “Thank you for motivating me to film this ad. My visit to Selma was powerful and inspiring and I look forward to returning and bringing my kids.”

This drew a rebuke from King, who said “Regretfully, I do not believe that I or the Martin Luther king Jr. Center legitimately motivated you to film this ad, as it is in opposition to nonviolence and to much of what my father taught. I encourage you to study my father/nonviolence in full.”

Mandel responded by lecturing King about what her father supposedly believed about gun rights:

After that, King referred Mandel to her father speaking about how having a gun would be counter-productive to a non-violent civil rights movement.

This wouldn’t be the first time King repudiated Mandel for invoking her father.

Mandel used the civil rights leader’s name last year while he was railing against Critical Race Theory at a campaign event last year. King asked Mandel not to invoke her father in his anti-Critical Race Theory talking points, and Mandel responded by sneering at her “lectures” and calling her a “race politics profiteer.”

Mandel’s claim to know more about King than his daughter drew notice from political observers, many of whom were not impressed:

Watch above, via Mandel’s YouTube channel.

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