Politics

Lincoln Project Ad Features Lin Wood Encouraging Republicans To Boycott Georgia Runoffs

No featured image available

The Lincoln Project began running a Facebook ad on Saturday that features footage of attorney Lin Wood and far-right agitator Nick Fuentes encouraging Republicans to boycott the upcoming Georgia runoff elections.

“Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election?” states the Lincoln Project ad, which has reached up to 300,000 people in Georgia as of Monday afternoon, according to Facebook’s political ad library.

The ad opens up with footage of Fuentes leading a crowd at a December rally in Washington D.C. in chants of “destroy the GOP” and later features footage of Wood at a Georgia rally the same month telling a pro-Trump crowd that Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue “have not earned your vote. Don’t you give it to them.”

The Lincoln Project is running this ad in Georgia on Facebook encouraging Republicans not to vote, featuring Lin Wood, among others https://t.co/4UWYCTd7fk pic.twitter.com/63QCmZFxrC

— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) January 4, 2021

The Lincoln Project ad started running on Facebook one day after Wood tweeted that Vice President Mike Pence should be arrested and executed by firing squad for treason in reaction to Pence’s refusal to declare President Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election.

Fuentes is known for being a key figure in the Groyper movement, which, according to the Anti-Defamation League, is a “loose network of alt-right figures who decry mainstream conservatives for failing to adequately support an ‘American First,’ pro-white agenda.”

The Lincoln Project ad is still active on Facebook as of Monday afternoon and could reach up to 500,000 people, according to Facebook’s ad library. The group has spent between $10,000 to $15,000 on the ad, according to the library.

Facebook executives issued a press release in October saying it was “banning paid ads that suggest voting is useless or advise people not to vote.”

Facebook removed the Lincoln Project ad on Monday evening.

“We don’t allow ads that delegitimize the outcome of the election so we’re rejecting these ads for violating this policy,” a Facebook spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Democrats will regain control of the Senate if Loeffler and Perdue lose to their Democratic challengers in Tuesday’s runoff elections in Georgia.

Lincoln Project co-founder Reed Galen told Politico in December that the group is “as much never-Republican as we are anything else.”

Galen also said his group is coordinating with Fair Fight, the group founded by former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, Senate Majority PAC and other Democratic groups on how “we can be helpful to them either with [polling], staff support or financial support.”

This post has been updated with a statement from a Facebook spokesperson.