Latino group pulls anti-Gillespie attack ad

A Latino group on Tuesday announced that it had pulled a political ad showing a truck with a sticker for Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie chasing minority children down the street.

“We knew our ad would ruffle feathers,” Cristobal Alex, president of the Latino Victory Fund, said in a statement on Tuesday. “We held a mirror up to the Republican Party, and they don’t like what they see. We have decided to pull our ad at this time.” 

The ad drew condemnation from Republicans, including Gillespie’s campaign, which called the group’s ads a “desperate smear campaign,” according to The Washington Post.

The decision to pull the ad also came shortly after a driver plowed a truck into a pedestrian bike lane in New York City, killing at least eight people.

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“Given recent events, we will be placing other powerful ads into rotation that highlight the reasons we need to elect progressive leaders in Virginia,” Alex said in the statement.

In the ad, children can be seen running from a large truck flying a Confederate flag and with a Gillespie campaign sticker on its bumper. The ad also shows adults watching white nationalists march while a narrator asks: “Is this what Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie mean by the American Dream?”

“It’s a very stark ad, but those portrayals in the ad are what the Latino and immigrant communities feel right now in Virginia,” Alex told The Washington Post.

Gillespie has come under fire by Democrats for slamming his opponent Ralph Northam (D) on being weak on fighting the MS-13 gang.

Democrats have also criticized Gillespie for not condemning Trump’s original remarks on the August march in Charlottesville, Va., attributing the violence to “both sides.” 

Several Democratic ads have targeted Gillespie for his response to the white nationalist march, including a Democratic-funded mailer that showed Gillespie alongside Trump superimposed over an image of the marching white supremacists, to which Northam has given his approval.