Deceptive Ad Accuses Kathy Barnette of Supporting BLM

A super PAC supporting Mehmet Oz has released an attack ad targeting Kathy Barnette that falsely accuses her of supporting BLM. Barnette has been surging down the stretch of Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate primary and now finds herself in a three-way tie with Oz and David McCormick as voters head to the polls on Tuesday.

The super PAC, American Leadership Action, tries to depict Barnette as a staunch advocate of leftist positions, including support for the far-left Black Lives Matter organization. The ad includes deceptively edited clips featuring Barnette’s past comments on race relations.

For example, the ad shows a clip of Kathy Barnette saying “black Americans feel disenfranchised.” It then cuts to another clip of Barnette saying, “systemic racism, specifically among police officers” without providing context.

One of the clips in question was lifted from a video statement Barnette put out during the George Floyd riots in 2020, in which she condemns the BLM organization and the violence it endorsed. She also rejected the notion of “systemic racism” in policing.