Attack ad shows Jewish Alaska Senate candidate Al Gross grasping cash, with Schumer lurking
(JTA) — Al Gross, the insurgent challenger in Alaska’s Senate race, says an ad attacking him just days before votes are tallied “has disgusting anti-Semitic tropes.”
The digital ad for Sen. Dan Sullivan, the incumbent Republican, shows Gross holding fanned-out cash, with a pile of money in front of him, evoking the age-old stereotype of Jews as money-grubbing. The face of Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Jewish Senate minority leader, is visible in the background.
Here’s a new digital ad being run by @SenDanSullivan against @DrAlGrossAK, who’s Jewish, with an illustration of him fanning out money and a sinister-looking @SenSchumer, who’s also Jewish, lurking behind him in the shadows: pic.twitter.com/rQRA1lAdQq
— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) October 31, 2020
“Lower 48 liberals are flooding Alaska with millions,” the ad says, in an allusion to the unprecedented sums that Democrats nationwide have donated to Gross’ campaign as part of a national push to flip the Senate away from a Republican majority. Polls have shown Gross and Sullivan essentially neck and neck for months.
The ad is not the first this year to reflect anti-Semitic tropes. Others have shown candidates surrounded by money, and one ad depicted Jon Ossoff, the Jewish Democratic Senate candidate in Georgia, with his nose artificially lengthened in an ad that his opponent said was inadvertent and removed.
Gross criticized the pro-Sullivan advertisement on Twitter. Among the others to do so was Yair Lapid, a leading Israeli politician, who said the “antisemitic advert” was “a disgrace and a stain on the American democracy we all admire so much.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30