“Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers is happy to give lip service to ‘civility’, but when faced with the first real political challenge of her career, she’s proven that she’s just another tired career politician who’s resorted to attacks that have been found to be misleading, false, and even dangerous to children. Cathy McMorris Rodgers should be embarrassed – she should take down these despicable, false ads and immediately apologize.” – Drew Godinich, DCCC spokesperson
HEADLINE: Spokane Public Radio: Children’s Advocates Criticize McMorris Rodgers Campaign Ad
This week, a group of Spokane residents, including several people in the medical field who have worked with child victims of sexual assault, addressed a open letter to McMorris Rodgers. The letter says the ad is not only misleading, it’s dangerous to children, says pediatrician Dr. Deborah Harper.
“People who abuse your children are, unfortunately, people you’ve introduced your children to,” Harper said. “People you have invited to your home, people you and your children think are safe. They are not the man in the hoodie. So you are teaching children to be afraid of the wrong person, and not teaching them to be afraid of the correct person. And you are activating and harming children who have already been molested.”
Later, Brown did vote for a stronger bill, which unanimously passed in 2005. That bill remains law today.
Harper wants candidates to be careful when they air material children will see.
“Children see things differently than we do,” she said. “We need to think about kids when we’re communicating in ways children are going to be able to see. We must not put up images that are going to activate PTSD in children who have already been molested or abused.”
Spokane Public Radio reached out to McMorris Rodgers’s campaign for comment. At this time, our calls have not been returned.
HEADLINE: Spokane Spokesman-Review Opinion: Shawn Vestal: McMorris Rodgers’ offensive campaign ads and flyers undermine her call for political civility
Over the past year, Cathy McMorris Rodgers has fallen in love with the sound of her own voice on the subject of civility. But nothing tests a politician’s bromides about civility like a close election. Facing her strongest challenge in years, Rodgers has gone predictably negative – her recent flyers and TV spots suggesting that Lisa Brown is actually kinda sorta pro-pedophile are not routine, predictably negative ads, though.
They are the full Willie Horton, the precise kind of despicable politics that Cathy McMorris Rodgers pretends to be against.
Look, her civility campaign has always been a kind of con. A yearlong campaign about civility that completely omits any discussion of the rotting head on that fish – i.e., the spectacularly uncivil president she supports – is transparently ridiculous.
But the new ads erase all doubt: McMorris Rodgers is now civility’s Wizard of Oz.
[…]
McMorris Rodgers’ flyers, though, are despicable.
HEADLINE: The Stranger: Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’s Ads Are So Awful That Doctors Are Asking Her to Stop Using Them
I thought Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers was going to run a re-election campaign based purely on the popularity of Trump’s tax breaks for the wealthiest people and corporations in the country, but that does not appear to be her current strategy! Instead, she’s running a classic fear-mongering ad campaign full of insanely misleading claims and outright falsehoods.
[…]
On Tuesday, KXLY reported that McMorris Rodgers’s latest batch of negative TV ads and mailers attacking her Democratic challenger, Lisa Brown, are so bad that a group of Spokane-area child abuse and prevention providers have signed an open letter “strongly condemning” McMorris Rodgers.
“Rep. McMorris Rodgers decision to distribute a provocative fearful image, mailed to tens of thousands of homes in eastern Washington, reinforces harmful stereotypes that do not correspond with the data on sexual assault perpetrators,” the letter reads. “Further, this image references racial stereotypes that reinforce explicit racism and implicit racial biases that have devastating consequences for people of color in our country.”
[…]
McMorris Rodgers’s spokesman, Jared Powell, did not respond when I asked if the Congresswoman plans to apologize to Brown for the ads and to stop distributing them around Spokane.
McMorris Rodgers is talking about votes Lisa Brown took in the 1990s because the Trump tax cut she constantly Tweets about isn’t exactly a winning issue. According to Gallup, only 39 percent of Americans approve of the cut. The underwhelming response to the cut might have something to do with the fact that corporations used the extra money to reward their shareholders instead of their workers, as many predicted.
HEADLINE: The Inlander: McMorris Rodgers doubles down on deceptive “sex offender” attack ads
Despite a torrent of criticism, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has doubled down on her latest ad campaign that attempts to portray her opponent, Lisa Brown, as so soft on sex offenders as to be “dangerous.”
[…]
That same year, Brown sponsored a bill that expanded the definition of communicating with a minor for immoral purposes.
Her bill established that it was a crime for sexual predators to communicate with a person over the internet who they thought was a minor — regardless of their actual age. In other words, a law enforcement officer could pretend to be a minor online, in order to root out sex offenders.
It passed both houses unanimously.
Looking at the full breadth of Brown’s record, to accuse her of being soft on sex offenders is an odd charge. Brown once backed a bill requiring life sentences for repeat sex offenders. She notes that she got the Legislator of the Year award in 2005 from the Washington Council of Police and Sheriffs.
[…]
McMorris Rodgers’ spokesman did not return calls or emails made today or Tuesday about the advertisements.
HEADLINE: Northwest Public Broadcasting: Washington 5th District Race Draws Criticism For McMorris Rodgers Ads
Despite criticism, 5th District Republican Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers isn’t backing down on a controversial ad campaign attacking her Democratic opponent, Lisa Brown, using information proven to be misleading and false.
HEADLINE: Spokane Spokesman-Review: Ad watch: Latest attack ads against Brown make questionable claims
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and the state Republican Party are stepping up attacks on Democratic challenger Lisa Brown with a mailer that suggests the former state legislator is soft on sexual predators and a newspaper ad that she claims credit where it’s not due.
They rely on selective interpretations of legislative history and questionable claims.
HEADLINE: Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Connelly: McMorris Rodgers talks ‘civility,’ goes for the gut in TV ad
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash. was a trenchant, non-stop critic of President Obama, but has responded to the Trump era by trotting out a new tweet and television theme of late — “civility.”
“We may not always agree, but we don’t need to be disagreeable,” she recently told KREM-TV in Spokane. McMorris Rodgers has waxed eloquent on Fox News about “the importance of retaining civility in our country.”
Or to Time magazine, McMorris Rodgers, a member of the House Republican leadership, reflected: “I’ve been thinking a lot about everything going on in our country and the word I keep coming back to is ‘civility.'”
But a tough election opponent can change your whole way of looking at things.
McMorris Rodgers is on the air and out with a new campaign mailing, and she’s going for the gut. The accusation is that ex-State Sen. Lisa Brown is soft on sex offenders, cherry picking a 1986 vote in the Legislature.