A Democrat Just Featured a January 6th Rally Attendee in Her Campaign Ad. I Have Things to Say.

I don’t want to write this post.

I’m going to anyway.

A Democratic candidate for governor of Texas just released a campaign ad featuring a woman who attended the January 6th rally. The rally that sent a mob to the Capitol. The rally that sent people into that building to beat police officers with flagpoles and fire extinguishers. The rally where I held the line.

Her name is Gina Hinojosa. The woman in the ad is Lynn Davenport. Davenport describes herself as a “staunch conservative” who attended the January 6th rally but didn’t go into the Capitol. Hinojosa’s campaign is featuring her as a crossover voter — proof that even conservatives are done with Greg Abbott.

I understand the political logic. I do. Texas is hard. Abbott is entrenched. You show crossover appeal wherever you can find it.

But this isn’t just any crossover voter. This is someone who was at that rally. The rally where people were whipped into a frenzy and sent to destroy our democracy. The rally where my brothers and sisters in uniform were brutalized. The rally where over 140 officers were assaulted — some of whom never came back to work. Some of whom took their own lives afterward.

Michael Fanone said it better than I can. Mike was beaten and electroshocked on his neck with a Taser that day. He had a heart attack. He lost consciousness. He said: “They would rather campaign alongside an insurrectionist than campaign alongside an officer that fought to defend the Capitol on January 6th. That is disgusting.”

He’s right.

I’ve spent the last five years fighting the whitewashing of January 6th. I’ve fought the pardons. I’ve fought the denialism. I’ve fought the people who want to rewrite what happened that day into something it wasn’t. And now I have to fight a Democrat who thinks featuring someone from that rally is a good campaign strategy.

There’s a version of this argument that says: she didn’t storm the Capitol, she just attended the rally, it’s not fair to lump everyone together. I’ve heard it. I don’t buy it.

The rally was the mechanism. It was the match. You don’t get to say “I was just at the match” and walk away clean. Not from this.

I’m not telling Texans not to vote for Hinojosa. Greg Abbott is a disaster and I want him out. But Democrats cannot keep making the calculation that accountability for January 6th is something we can trade away for political convenience. Every time we do that, we tell the officers who bled that day that their sacrifice was worth less than a polling advantage.

It wasn’t. It isn’t.

I held that line. Mike Fanone held that line. Hundreds of officers held that line.

The least the Democratic Party can do is not feature the people who were on the other side of it in their campaign ads.

That’s not too much to ask.

-Harry