Republican Party Withdraws Attack on Gina Ortiz Jones’ Sexual Orientation

(Photo: Gina Ortiz Jones campaign)

The National Republican Campaign Committee’s DemocratFacts website has removed language attacking Congressional candidate Gina Ortiz Jones for her sexual orientation.

DemocratFacts is a Republican website that offers party stalwarts and conservative groups preferred attacks which can be used in all forms of political advertising against opposition candidates.

Jones is a native of San Antonio, an Air Force veteran, a former member of the National Intelligence community, and an out lesbian. She is running against Republican Tony Gonzales for the Texas 23rd congressional district which encompasses parts of western San Antonio and stretches across the southwestern portion of Texas all the way to El Paso.

According to the Huffington Post, the post on DemocratFacts included a picture of Jones and her partner which said, “Jones and her female partner lived and worked near Washington, DC, not Texas” before Jones was a candidate for Congress.

The post was edited to remove mention of Jones’ partner on August 25 after the Huffington Post reported on it. “It was included as a factual statement but we removed it because her orientation has nothing to do with her being a Washington, D.C., carpetbagger who supports closing local military bases in TX-23 that will cost thousands of jobs,” Bob Salera, NRCC spokesman, told the Huffington Post.

Even though the post removed mention of Jones’ partner, the picture of the couple remains on the site.

“The NRCC attacking any candidate for their sexual orientation is reprehensible, vile and gutter-politics at its worst. That in the year 2020, they think it’s a winning strategy against a veteran who has served her country honorably, tells you everything you need to know about Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” Will Goodwin, Army veteran and director of Government Relations for VoteVets, told Out In SA in an email.

“These personal, homophobic, and transphobic attacks shows how shameless and low Tony Gonzales and the NRCC are willing to go in the race for Texas’s 23rd Congressional District. It also shows how shallow their case is against a formidable veteran candidate of color and member of the LGBTQ community,” Rebecca Marques, the Texas state director at the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement.

Jones responded to the attack in a Twitter post saying, “I remember what it was like to serve under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. To hide who I am to serve our country. To the bigots: take your best shot.”

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