GOP attack ad uses social media pic candidate posted after mass shooting at daughter’s yoga class

Image via Florida House Republican Campaign Committee.

There’s a TV attack ad targeting House District 113 voters featuring a washed-out image of Democratic candidate Jackie Gross-Kellogg. It’s not the most flattering photo, she said. That’s not the problem.

It’s the source and context.

The picture in the ad, funded by the Florida House Republican Campaign Committee in support of incumbent Republican Rep. Vicki Lopez, came from a Facebook post that Gross-Kellogg made on Nov. 2, 2018. She’d just gotten home from a polling site, where she and others rallied on behalf of the post-Parkland March for Our Lives movement.

Then she got an alarming text from her daughter.

There had been a shooting that day at the yoga class her daughter regularly attended in Tallahassee. A gunman, about whom the U.S. Department of Homeland Security later published a “case study of misogynistic extremism,” entered the yoga studio and opened fire, killing two women and injuring five.

Gross-Kellogg’s daughter texted to say she was OK. She had decided to skip class that day.

In the photo, Gross-Kellogg indeed looks haggard, her eyes downcast. Ironically, she wears a shirt listing many other mass shootings, from Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech to Columbine and Aurora, the words forming the shape of a pistol. Below, it reads, “Enough is enough,” and “March 24, 2018,” the date of the March for Our Lives protest in Washington.

Gross-Kellogg took to social media Tuesday to express outrage over the photo’s use.

“Whoever my opponent has hired to create this commercial, please know that they read what this photograph was about and chose it anyway to depict me as a ‘Radical,’” she wrote.

“The next day, Nov. 3, 2018, I decided to go canvas to get Debbie Mucarsel-Powell elected to U.S. Congress, and she won, and six years later, I’m going to get her elected to U.S. Senate. And hopefully, you will get me elected to FL House 113.”

Speaking with the Key Biscayne Independent this week about the ad’s content and mailers targeting HD 113 voters, Lopez denied having a hand in their creation. The TV ad’s disclaimer says Lopez approved the message.

“It’s not mine, and I still have not seen it,” she told the outlet Thursday. “As you can see, it’s created by the Republican Party.”

The ads falsely say Gross-Kellogg, a former Central Regional Coordinator for the Miami-Dade Council PTA/PTSA Executive Board, has voiced support for trans kids playing sports, defunding police and raising taxes.

To support its claim, the ad cites an endorsement Gross-Kellogg received from the progressive Florida Rising group and a Key Biscayne Independent report from April 2023 that quotes her.

Florida Rising’s 2024 platform does not include anything about raising taxes, defunding police, or trans issues. However, social media posts by the group in 2020 and 2021 include hashtags supporting efforts to defund police departments, raise taxes for a “people’s budget,” and vow to “fight capitalism … with socialism.”

The Independent noted in its report this week that in its 2023 story, Gross-Kellogg only criticizes Gov. Ron DeSantis, specifically his signing of legislation banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, allowing the permitless carry of concealed firearms, restricting LGBTQ-inclusive classroom instruction and eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs at state universities.

The Independent contacted House Speaker-designate Daniel Perez, who chairs the Florida House Republican Campaign Committee, to demand that the ads be pulled or altered to remove references to its reporting.

Lopez agreed that if the source of the ads’ claims is incorrect, “that should not have been used.”

The incumbent Republican holds a massive funding advantage this cycle. Between the time she flipped the HD 113 seat red in 2022 and Sept. 20, she raised $765,000. By Sept. 21, she had $567,500 remaining.

She also received more than $70,000 in in-kind support from the Republican Party of Florida for campaign staff, research, and polling expenses.

Gross-Kellogg, meanwhile, raised close to $39,000 between filing to run in late May and Sept. 20.

While the Miami-Dade Democratic Party endorsed Gross-Kellogg last month, it has yet to provide her with any funding or in-kind support. The Florida Democratic Party has neither endorsed nor donated to her campaign, despite the county party’s recent assertion that HD 113 remains a D+4 seat, “providing a significant opportunity for Democrats.”

HD 113 spans a center-east portion of Miami-Dade, covering all of Key Biscayne and parts of Coral Gables and Miami.

The General Election is on Nov. 5.