It was a selfie by Virginia Del. Mark Cole that first caught Sookyung Oh’s eye.
Cole, R-Fredericksburg, tweeted an image showing off a bright red face mask he said he’d purchased from the congressional campaign of Del. Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper.
“COVID-19, ‘MADE IN CHINA,” it read.
Oh, who is Virginia director of the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium Action Fund, said that she and other Asian American community leaders were “shocked” to find the masks for sale as campaign merchandise.
“He’s literally financing his campaign with a tactic that has been shown to exacerbate anti-Asian racism,” Oh said of Freitas, a libertarian-leaning Republican who is running against first-term Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger in central Virginia’s largely rural 7th district.
The “Made in China” masks are on sale on Freitas’s campaign website as part of a $15 trio of face coverings. One says, “Don’t sneeze on me,” a variation of the libertarian “Don’t tread on me” Gadsden flag, and another pairs the Texas battle cry “Come and Take It” with a picture of a hand-sanitizer bottle.
Cole, who has made the selfie his Twitter profile picture, said he got the masks after donating to Freitas’s campaign. He said it was “silly” for groups to suggest the “Made in China” quip could encourage racial discrimination against Asian Americans, saying that the mask is “basically just stating a fact – the virus originated in China.”
“I think there’s nothing wrong with it, and I think it’s a good way to encourage people to wear masks,” Cole said.
Freitas campaign manager Joe Desilets defended the masks in a statement, saying they are intended to target the “communist regime in China” that “lied to the world and enabled a deadly virus to spread, leading to a global pandemic.”
“This is the same regime that violently suppresses its own people, press, and scientific community. Nick will not hesitate to hold such a regime accountable,” Desilets said.
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