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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Chris McGreal in Milwaukee

How Republicans’ racist attack ads wiped out Democrat’s lead in Wisconsin

Wisconsin Senate candidate Mandela Barnes speaks at a rally Saturday, in Milwaukee.
The Wisconsin Senate candidate Mandela Barnes speaks at a rally on Saturday in Milwaukee. Photograph: Morry Gash/AP

After months of flinging mud, Senator Ron Johnson was finally obliged to admit that his Democratic opponent in the upper midwestern state of Wisconsin had never actually made a call to “defund the police”.

But that did not stop the Trumpist senator’s re-election drive from continuing to broadcast racially charged advertisements falsely claiming that Mandela Barnes, the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, “rationalized violence” against the police and tying him to the most controversial positions of Black Lives Matter.

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