GOP Senate candidate slammed for ‘homophobic’ ad calling people ‘pansies’
The Human Rights Campaign called the use of the antigay slur "shameful and dangerous"
A Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate has been criticized for a “shameful and dangerous” new campaign ad featuring a homophobic slur.
Donald Bolduc, a retired U.S. Army officer, is running in the Republican primary in New Hampshire, with the winner taking on incumbent Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.
In a new campaign ad, he complains about “liberal, socialist pansies,” referencing a old slur for gay men, the Advocate reports.
“I didn’t spend my life defending this country to let a bunch of liberal, socialist pansies squander it away,” Bolduc says in the ad.
He continues: “I’m Don Bolduc, I approve this message, and I’m asking for your vote.”
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ organization, slammed the ad, branding it “homophobic” and saying it had “no place” in U.S. politics.
“Donald Bolduc’s use of a homophobic slur in his campaign ad is shameful and dangerous,” HRC spokesperson Wyatt Ronan told WMUR. “A campaign run on hate has no place in New Hampshire or anywhere in this country.”
Ronan added: “History shows that New Hampshire is won by supporting and advancing the rights and protections of LGBTQ Granite Staters, not demeaning them.”
HRC also noted that Bolduc, who opposes same-sex marriage and rejects a recent Supreme Court decision finding that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ against discrimination, is running against another anti-LGBTQ Republican.
Businessman Corky Messner made transphobic comments at a February event, saying, “What’s happening with the transgenders, what they’re teaching kids in school and what’s happening there is horrific.”
However, in July Messener, who is a veteran, also said that transgender people serving in the military would be “okay” as long as “there’s no distraction from the mission of the military.”
“Bolduc’s attacks on the LGBTQ+ community might help him in his Republican primary against Corky Messner, who has called the fight for transgender rights ‘horrific,’ but it’s wrong for New Hampshire,” Ronan said.
“That’s why voters will reject them in the fall and reelect Jeanne Shaheen, who has always fought to make a difference for the LGBTQ community.”
According to the most recent poll in New Hampshire, Sen. Shaheen would comfortably beat either Republican in November’s election.
A University of New Hampshire poll found Shaheen leading both Bolduc and Messner by similar margins, 54-35, with around ten percent of voters undecided.
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