Collins defends ad showing opponent speaking Korean against claims of bigotry

Rep. Chris Collins’s (N.Y.) reelection campaign is defending the embattled GOP lawmaker over claims that a recent ad from his team showing his Democratic opponent speaking Korean is bigoted.

Democrat Nate McMurray has attacked Collins over the ad, which depicts McMurray over text that initially appears to look like subtitles and accuses him of supporting trade deals that would send U.S. jobs to South Korea.

A Collins campaign spokeswoman told CNN on Tuesday that McMurray was taking a page out of “[House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi’s playbook” by labeling the ad “racist or bigoted.”

{mosads}McMurray is “resort[ing] to the only tool in Nancy Pelosi’s playbook — label everything you don’t like as racist or bigoted,” Collins spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre asserted.

Baldassarre also claimed in her statement to CNN that McMurray had taken down the original video from which the footage was used “because he didn’t want to defend his efforts to promote a Korean-U.S. Free Trade Agreement that shipped nearly 100,000 U.S. jobs overseas.”

McMurray “needs a new video to explain why he opposes President Trump’s policies that are protecting American jobs and American workers,” she added.

McMurray had slammed Collins over the ad late last week.

“I watched that ugly attack ad with my son. His mom is Korean. My son speaks Korean,” McMurray tweeted on Friday. “He looked at me with a grave sadness on his face. He felt what I felt. Neither of us said a word. But let me speak now. Yes they lie. They’re also bigots. We will defeat them.”

I watched that ugly attack ad with my son. His mom is Korean. My son speaks Korean.

He looked at me with a grave sadness on his face. He felt what I felt. Neither of us said a word. But let me speak now.

Yes they lie. They’re also bigots. We will defeat them.

— Nate McMurray for Congress (@Nate_McMurray) September 22, 2018

In the original footage shot by McMurray’s campaign, the candidate speaks Korean and expresses hope for eased tensions between North and South Korea while not mentioning jobs, according to a New York Times translation.

McMurray served as a business consultant for the United States–Korea Free Trade Agreement, which passed Congress in 2011, according to the Times. The trade deal is one of many that President Trump has railed against, claiming it is unfair to the U.S.

McMurray’s wife is also a naturalized citizen from South Korea, and the two have several children together.

The New York Democrat told the Times in an interview this week that the ad was “xenophobic.”

“It was hurtful,” he said. “They’ve used everything in their power to make it look like the very fact of speaking Korean or Chinese is un-American or wrong.”

Baldassarre’s response about trade, he added, was meant to hide the “real intention” behind Collins’s ad. 

“This is a complete pivot because they’re embarrassed about what their real intention was,” McMurray told the Times. 

Collins announced last week that he would begin campaigning again after suspending his campaign in August following his indictment on federal securities fraud charges.