Late hardball from the WSRP

Things get rough in the 14th LD and elsewhere

Editor’s Note: This is a special Sunday edition of The Observer because we don’t like to get beat on inside-baseball stories like this. 

Spanish-speaking voters in the new 14th Legislative District out in the Yakima Valley have been getting this text targeting the three Democratic candidates for the district’s seats in the Legislature. Fair warning: It’s the hardest of political hardball. Here’s a translation:  

This is Matteo from the Washington State Republican Party. Maria Beltran, Ana Kennedy, and Chelsea Dimas support chemically castrating your children in school without your knowledge or consent. They reject God's design for two genders and want to confuse your children about whether they are boys or girls. They are deranged to the point of wanting to eliminate the Spanish language, which is why the words are no longer feminine or masculine, but non-binary. They call themselves "Latinx" instead of "Latino." They hate you, they hate your family, they hate God, and they hate the truth. Don't let them represent you! 

We’re told similar tactics are being deployed in Southwest Washington, where there are hard-fought races for the U.S. House and seats in the Legislature. One of them featured this somewhat bizarre image, which superimposes the hammer and sickle of Soviet Russia atop the rainbow Pride flag: 

The 20th Century called: It wants its red-baiting, gay-bashing politics back.

Here’s why you should care about this: Late in the game, money pours into various last-minute tactics aimed at swaying undecided or marginal voters. With little time left for candidates to respond, political parties and independent players sometimes resort to outlandish and outright false claims in a no-holds-barred quest to win.