TPM Livewire

Hoekstra Scrubs Sites Of Racially-Charged Ad

It looks like Pete Hoekstra doesn’t even want supporters to know he once defended his highly controversial Super Bowl ad, let alone paid a fortune to run it.  

Hoekstra, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, has scrubbed all mention of the ad featuring an actress portraying a Chinese woman speaking in broken English from his campaign Facebook page and YouTube account. Back on Feb 5, when the ad ran during the Michigan broadcast of the Super Bowl, Hoekstra posted it in both places. Then as the controversy kicked up, he used his YouTube account to post clips of him vehemently defending the spot on Fox News.

Now the ad is gone from his Facebook page (as captured in this screenshot, which shows all entries from Feb. removed) as well as his YouTube account. More interestingly, Hoekstra’s defense of the ad has also been scrubbed from YouTube (as this screenshot shows).  

Hoekstra’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from TPM Tuesday. 

— Advertisement —
— Advertisement —
Editor & Publisher

Josh Marshall

Managing Editor

David Kurtz

Senior Associate Editor

Paul Werdel

Associate Editor

Sara Libby

Assistant Editor

Igor Bobic

Front Page Editor

David Taintor

Poll Editor

Kyle Leighton

News Writer

Pema Levy

Video Editor

Michael Lester

Polling Fellow

Tom Kludt

Video Fellow

Clayton Ashley

Research Interns

Michael Brooks

Publishing Interns

Christopher O’Driscoll

Miles Read

General Manager &
General Counsel

Millet Israeli

VP, Ad Sales

Bruce Ellerstein

Waldo Tibbetts

Manager, Ad Operations and Sales Support

Versha Sharma

Deputy Publisher

Callie Schweitzer

Director of Technology

Eric Buth

Designer/Developer

Ni Mu

Matthew Wozniak