Grieving Family Condemns Sen. Jon Husted Over Attack Ad Featuring Fatal Ohio Crash
Key Takeaways
- •Husted's campaign ad portrays an April fatal car crash near Columbus as a consequence of Sherrod Brown's immigration policies.
- •Relatives of the Soposki family say they were never consulted, object to the political use of their tragedy, and have asked the campaign to stop airing the ad.
- •The advertisement was paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and approved by Husted's campaign.
- •The Daily Beast reported that the family photograph used in the ad is copyrighted by a friend who did not consent, potentially exposing the campaign to an infringement claim.
- •The 2026 race pits Husted, appointed to the Senate in January 2025 after JD Vance's resignation, against Brown, who lost his 2024 reelection bid to Republican Bernie Moreno.
Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) is drawing outrage after his campaign used a family's tragedy to attack his Democratic opponent, Sherrod Brown.
According to reporting by The New York Times, Husted's ad frames a fatal car crash just outside Columbus, Ohio, as the result of immigration policies. Relatives of Lynnea, Luke, and Logan Soposki — the family who died in the April crash — say they are angered by Husted and his campaign.
The confrontation comes in the state's 2026 Senate race. Husted, a former Ohio secretary of state and lieutenant governor, was appointed to the seat in January 2025 by Gov. Mike DeWine after JD Vance resigned to become vice president, and he is now seeking election to the final two years of the term. Brown, a Democrat who represented Ohio in the Senate for three terms before losing his 2024 reelection race to Republican Bernie Moreno, is seeking a return to the chamber.
"What we all want is to be able to grieve in peace and privacy, and for our family to not be used in such a classless way by a politician, especially without being consulted," Jesse Mallen, the brother of Lynnea Soposki, told The Times. "We certainly would not have said yes, but quite frankly, I think they knew that."
The ad opens by declaring that Brown, a former senator who represented Ohio, "opened our borders to dangerous illegals. The consequences were deadly." It then displays photographs of the semi-truck accident, the family, and the driver, Modou Ngom. The Times noted that the Ohio Department of Public Safety stated that the naturalized citizen entered the U.S. in the 1990s and "subsequently used multiple names and dates of birth to obtain state and federal identification."
According to The Times, Mallen reached out to the Husted campaign by email and certified mail to implore it to stop running the ad. He also posted on Facebook and Reddit, writing, "Our grief is not raw material for a campaign."
The Times reported that the ad was paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee — the Senate Republicans' national campaign arm, which works to elect GOP candidates — and approved by Husted's campaign.
Separately, The Daily Beast reported that the Soposki family photograph used in the ad was taken by a friend who holds the copyright and did not consent to its use. Under U.S. copyright law, reproducing a copyrighted photograph without the holder's permission can give rise to an infringement claim by the rights holder.
"This is not a statement about immigration policy, and we are not making one for any party or candidate. It is a statement about our family," relatives of the Soposki family told The Daily Beast. "Lynnea and Luke were not political symbols."
