Republicans have taken umbrage with the notion that they’re weird — specifically when it comes to accusations that they’re weird about people (usually women) who don’t have children. The sentiment in Republican politics that childless Americans are — as JD Vance put it — disorienting and disturbing has become so prevalent that one GOP candidate has taken to borrowing his friends’ wife and children for photo ops. According to a Friday report from The New York Times, Derrick Anderson — a former Green Beret running for the House of Representatives in Virginia — has repeatedly featured a woman and her three daughters in campaign materials.
One photo features the group posing close together in an image that you could probably find framed on a grandmother’s mantle, the type of photo that your parents made your uncle with a DSLR camera take because “we never get nice pictures together.” In one campaign video, Anderson is seen walking side-by-side with the same woman. In another video, which was featured on the National Republican Campaign Committee’s website and on his YouTube channel , shows Anderson speaking to the woman and the three girls while seated in a home dining room.
According to the Times, the woman and girls are “the wife and children of a longtime friend.” Anderson’s campaign website does not mention a wife or children, but notes that he “lives in Spotsylvania County with his dog, Ranger, a Dalmatian.” The Republican candidate recent.
