An Oregon school district has asked Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to remove two campaign ads featuring transgender athletes because they include a photo of two minor girls who are not transgender, The Hill reported Thursday.
The ads are part of a larger effort targeting Cruz's challenger, Democrat Rep. Colin Allred for his support of allowing biological males to compete against women in high school and college sports.
The ads, part of a multimillion-dollar campaign, feature high-profile transgender athletes, including former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas and CeCé Telfer, a Jamaican-born sprinter.
The ads also show two teen girls from Western Oregon, neither of whom is transgender, nor whose parents were aware the photo was used. One girl's school district, Beaverton, sent a formal request to the Cruz campaign asking that the ads be removed from all platforms because the families did not give permission to use the image.
In its email to the Cruz camp, which was shared with The Hill, the school district said, "It is alarming that your campaign would have produced/distributed/promoted this ad with false information, especially with minor children involved."
The photo appears to have been taken from a news segment discussing a transgender athlete in Oregon that did not show the subject athlete. Critics said the ad portrayed the girls in a way that implied one of them was transgender.
A spokesman for the Cruz campaign told The Hill the photo "features a female athlete who spoke out against boys playing in girls sports after participating in a track meet where a biological male beat female athletes and impacted individual and team medal results."
Cruz has a lead of 1.5 percentage points (48.3%-46.8%) over Allred, according to an Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey released Wednesday.
Kate McManus ✉
Kate McManus is a New Jersey-based Newsmax writer who's spent more than two decades as a journalist.
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