On Thursday, an Oregon school district asked Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) campaign to take down two ads that target transgender sports. The ads include pictures of two girls who are not transgender and whose parents did not give the Cruz campaign permission to use the pictures.
As part of a multimillion-dollar attack on his opponent, Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), over his support for trans-inclusive policies, Cruz’s campaign ads show photos of famous transgender athletes, such as Lia Thomas, a former University of Pennsylvania swimmer, and CeCé Telfer, a Jamaican-born sprinter who was the first openly trans woman to win an NCAA title.
They also have a picture of two young girls who compete in track and field events at high schools in Western Oregon that are next to each other. The Cruz ads make it look like both of the girls in the pictures are transgender, but they are not.
A person from one of the girls’ school districts said that neither they nor the girl’s family knew about the ads until The Hill asked them about them. A representative for Cruz’s campaign said that the girl’s parents did not give their okay for the picture to be used.
The parent of the second girl in the picture did not answer the phone when called for feedback. The Hill won’t say what the girls’ names are because they are too young.
The person from the Beaverton School District asked the Cruz campaign in an email sent Thursday that the ads be taken down “from any and all distribution platforms,” pointing out that the two athletes in the pictures are minors.
The spokesperson said in the email that neither the family nor the school or school district permitted for this picture to be used. The email was given to The Hill.
“It is scary that your campaign would have made, shared, and promoted this ad with false information, especially since it involves children.”
The picture of the two girls in Cruz’s ad seems to come from an April story in the Central Oregon Daily News about the abuse of a transgender high school athlete in the state.
Most people who saw that news story would have thought that one of the girls in the Cruz ad is transgender because of the way the picture was put together. The story talks at length about a transgender girl who participated in an event but never showed a picture of the athlete.
A Cruz campaign spokeswoman told The Hill that the picture “shows a female athlete who spoke out against boys playing in girls’ sports after being in a track meet where a biological male beat female athletes and changed the results for both individuals and teams.”
When asked about the school district’s request to take down the ad or whether the ad is misleading, the representative did not directly answer.
Cruz is a major conservative in the Senate and has been there since 2013. He is a strong opponent of policies that include transgender people.
To make it illegal for schools to let transgender women and girls play on female sports teams, Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced a bill in 2021. Title IX is a federal civil rights law that stops sex discrimination in schools and government-funded education programs.
In a recent debate with Allred, Cruz called transgender women “biological boys” many times and said that the Equality Act, which would protect classes based on sexual orientation and gender identity, required “boys to be able to go into girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms.” This was not true.
Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who often fights against transgender athletes being included, was on Ted Cruz’s show “Verdict with Ted Cruz” on October 4.
A poll from Emerson College Polling and The Hill released Wednesday shows that Cruz and Allred are almost tied for one of Texas’s two Senate spots. The Hill and Decision Desk HQ have made an election prediction model that says Cruz has a 76% chance of being re-elected.
