Only a couple weeks after debuting a racist campaign commercial during the Super Bowl and then adamantly defending it to anyone who would listen, Pete Hoekstra is now quietly trying to erase that ad from all of his web and social networking sites.
Hoekstra, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, has scrubbed all mention of the adfeaturing an actress portraying a Chinese woman speaking in broken English from his campaign Facebook page and YouTube account. Back on Feb 5, when the ad ran during the Michigan broadcast of the Super Bowl, Hoekstra posted it in both places. Then as the controversy kicked up, he used his YouTube account to post clips of him vehemently defending the spot on Fox News.
Now the ad is gone from his Facebook page (as captured in this screenshot, which shows all entries from Feb. removed) as well as his YouTube account. More interestingly, Hoekstra’s defense of the ad has also been scrubbed from YouTube (as this screenshot shows).
What a shock.