The meme war over the government shutdown has made its way to Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District race, with Republican candidate Brinker Harding facing criticism for posting a campaign video reacting to one of the "sombrero memes" on his social media profiles.
Harding's campaign Instagram feed shows reactions to national content, including a post responding to Vice President JD Vance's promise to stop "sombrero memes" if Democrats help reopen the government.
"Get back to work and the sombreros go away," Brinker said in the post.
Denise Powell, one of the Democratic candidates running for CD-2, called out Harding for what she described as "political theater."
"It is not a time for racist and juvenile memes," Powell said.
Powell emphasized the real-world impact of the shutdown on constituents.
"We have 150,000 people who are about to lose their SNAP benefits next month. We have 110,000 people that are gonna lose their ACA coverage. People are gonna go hungry," Powell said.
In a one-on-one interview, Harding defended his post and said memes are a funny and effective way to get points across.
"If I use a meme to get that point across, I think that's an effective way to do it because there are military families and single mothers not getting the resources that they need to survive. And for Denise Powell to make a political issue out of it and whine about it and, and clearly she obviously has said that I'm the front runner and I appreciate that, Denise," Harding said.
The criticism isn't just coming from political opponents. Local community groups like LULAC, which advocates for Latin Americans, have also expressed disappointment.
Harding asked to be on the LULAC Nebraska Council in 2023. Elsa Aranda was president then and told reporters she is disappointed in Harding's post.
"Brinker Harding and I, in my role as state director and as president had always been one of mutual respect, and I don't know what drove him to use a sombrero and the graphics that he used, but it makes me angry to think that he feels he can mock the Latino community," Aranda said.
Aranda is calling for Harding to delete the video and apologize to the Latino community.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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