It looks like a family holiday card except that the woman and children posing with Republican Derrick Anderson are not his wife or his offspring.
Anderson, who running in a close race for Virginia’s seventh congressional district, was seen in another image seated around the dining table with the same woman and three girls.
The images came to light in an article by The New York Times, headlined “G.O.P. Candidates, Looking to Soften Their Image, Turn to Their Wives,” which reported how “male Republicans struggling to appeal to female voters concerned about their records on reproductive rights are unleashing their spouses to make the pitch on their behalf.”
However Anderson, who is childless, engaged to be married and lives alone with his dog, sought to borrow the wife and children from a longtime friend in an apparent effort to appear as a family man.
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The article talks about how Republicans are alienating virtually every woman in the country. So, to appear electable, they’re having their wives and kids do the ads, so that out-of-touch women will see a woman in the ad and decide that the candidate is a good guy.
But that, and the whole focus on “traditional family values” and everything boxes them into a certain image, that you’re not a real American man if you’re not married with kids by the time you’re in your 30s or something. So, even if he had a picture with his fiance and dog, it would prove he’s not a “traditional family values” republican. So, better to pose with a friend’s wife and kids than prove that he’s not “normal”.