Anti-China group airs ads criticizing Val Demings

Joe Biden, Val Demings. Screen shot from Stand Up To China ad.

An outside group is releasing ads criticizing Democratic Senate candidate Val Demings, tying her to President Joe Biden’s record on China.

Stand Up to China released a 30-second spot that first aired today in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale media market, according to AdImpact.

The video spot begins suggesting domestic failures by the administration before taking Democratic leaders to task on foreign policy.

“Violent crime is on the rise, fueled by waves of deadly drugs from China,” a narrator states. “Chinese communists produce them; cartels push them. It’s an epidemic tearing our communities apart. But under Biden and Demings, these deadly drugs continue to flow across the border in record numbers, fueling the spike in crime. Yet Demings has failed to stop the flow of deadly drugs from China. Call Val Demings. Tell her to stand up to China and stop violent crime.”

Stand Up to China is a nonprofit group “formed to help give American Citizens a voice in the policy battles against China.” That significantly limits what sort of partisan electioneering can be conducted, and the ad never mentions party or advocates for Demings’ defeat at the ballot box.

But the slam on the Democratic U.S. Representative, an Orlando Democrat first elected in 2016, reaches South Florida voters days after Demings formally secured the Democratic nomination in Florida.

A website for Stand Up to China includes numerous national news stories about China-U.S. relations. The last item making any mention of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, the Republican Demings aims to unseat in November, was a link to an Axios article from December about the incumbent Republican calling for sanctions.

At least at the moment, the ad seems to be targeting the high concentration of voters of Latin American descent in the South Florida market. That’s a key constituency to Rubio, whose parents emigrated to Florida from Cuba before he was born. Rubio has made opposition to the Chinese Communist Party a key part of his agenda over two terms in the U.S. Senate.