Fact-checkers have pushed back on the accusation that Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel photoshopped himself into an image included in one of his ads.
The photo is thought to be genuine but may appear to be altered because a darkened filter was used.
The ad, in which Mr Mandel rails against critical race theory, was published earlier this week. In the video, the former Ohio treasurer stands on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where Martin Luther King Jr participated in the famous civil rights march in 1965.
Many social media users criticised the choice of location, including Bernice King, a lawyer and daughter of the civil rights icon.
“Martin Luther King marched right here so skin color wouldn’t matter,” Mr Mandell wrote when he tweeted out the 30-second video.
“Thank you @BerniceKing @TheKingCenter for motivating me to film this ad. My visit to Selma was powerful and inspiring and I look forward to returning and bringing my kids,” he later added.
“Josh: Regretfully, I do not believe that I or @TheKingCenter legitimately motivated you to film this ad, as it is in opposition to nonviolence and to much of what my father taught. I encourage you to study my father/nonviolence in full,” Ms King tweeted.
Other social media users claimed that Mr Mandel’s face had been photoshopped on top of the face of a Black soldier in another part of the video. But the claim has been deemed inaccurate, the photograph is real.
Mr Mandel, 44, joined the Marine Corps Reserves in 2000 and served at least two tours in Iraq as an intelligence specialist.
The photoshop claim is based almost only on observations made by third parties that Mr Mandel’s skin on his face appears to be lighter than his hands, according to Snopes. No proof has surfaced to suggest Mr Mandel wasn’t in the original image.
“You folks asked if Josh Mandel’s campaign photoshopped his head onto a Black man, and I looked for answers. They did not, the campaign says. It appears a darkening filter was used on the ad,” Politico reporter Natalie Allison tweeted.
“The Mandel Iraq photo truthers on this platform are pushing a pretty strange theory. Is the argument that you think he didn’t actually serve with Marines who were black? It really doesn’t make a lot of sense,” she added.
The Independent has reached out to the Mandel campaign for comment.
