On the eve of the election, the GOP in Washington is telling Hispanic Democratic voters, “I hate you” and “I hate God.”

WASHINGTON — On the eve of an election marked by increasingly bitter rhetoric, the Washington State Republican Party sent text messages Friday to Hispanic voters claiming Democratic candidates want to “destroy the Spanish language” and “support the chemical castration of your children.” at school without your knowledge or consent.”

“They hate you, they hate your family, they hate God and they hate the truth,” said the message sent Friday in Spanish, referring to the three Latino Democrats running in the Latino-majority 14th Legislative District. was changed as a result of controversial redistricting. a process that has angered Republicans.

Meanwhile, the state Republican Party sent a message in English to voters in the 3rd Congressional District in southwest Washington, where Rep. Marie Glusenkamp Perez is a Democrat who has repeatedly bucked her party to represent a district that former President Donald Trump won in 2020—in a high-profile rematch with Republican Joe Kent.

The message, sent with an image of the Communist hammer and sickle symbol on a rainbow background, calls the freshman congresswoman a “democratic socialist” and claims she lives in Portland and “supports defund the police, abortion before birth, castration of minors.” children/confuses them about their gender, higher taxes and less efficient government spending.”

Glusenkamp Perez’s campaign spokesman Phil Gardner said the message was “typical of the blatant, blatant crazy lies that Joe Kent and his far-right supporters are telling about Marie.” In her statement, Gardner noted that Glusenkamp Perez “obviously does not live in Portland” and has the support of the Washington Police and Sheriffs Board “due to her strong support of police.”

The post, in Spanish, claims that Democratic candidates Maria Beltran, Ana Ruiz Kennedy and Chelsea Dimas “reject God’s design for two genders and want to mislead your children about whether they are boys or girls.”

“They are deranged to the point that they want to destroy the Spanish language, so the words are now neither feminine nor masculine, but rather non-binary,” the message says. “They call themselves “Hispanics,” not “Hispanics.” They hate you, they hate your family, they hate God and they hate the truth. Don’t let them represent you!

Some people of Hispanic descent use the term “Latino” to avoid the gender “Hispanic” or “Latino”, while others do not like the term. Beltran and Dimas are the daughters of Mexican immigrants and both identify as gay, while Ruiz Kennedy was born in Mexico.

The new 14th Legislative District stretches from the eastern edge of Yakima to Pasco, covering the Yakama Reservation and much of the agricultural lower Yakima Valley. The Republicans running against Dimas and Ruiz Kennedy for the state House of Representatives, Gloria Mendoza and Deb Manjarrez, are also Hispanic.

Beltran, who is running against incumbent Republican Sen. Curtis King, posted a text message on Instagram Saturday and accused her opponent and the state GOP of “blatant lies and fear mongering.”

“They accuse me of terrible, blatantly untrue things and disrespect my Catholic faith and Mexican heritage,” she wrote. “While I have run an informed, issue-based campaign to provide our community with the leadership we deserve, King and his allies have continually lied, attempted to manipulate our community, and personally attacked me instead of engaging in real, truthful debate. It’s these kinds of cheap and blatant personal attacks that make people in our district want to tune out politics, and the Republican Party should be ashamed to engage in it.”

In a telephone interview Sunday, Washington State Republican Party Chairman Jim Walsh confirmed the text messages. He said the claim that Democrats support “chemical castration” is based on their responses to a Planned Parenthood poll in which they indicated support for transgender teens using drugs known as puberty blockers.

One such drug, Lupron, is a synthetic hormone that is also used to treat prostate and breast cancer. In some states, it is used to chemically castrate sex offenders.

“Nothing about the Democrats’ overreaction disproves the factual truth of the text messages,” Walsh said, defending the claim that Democrats hate families and God. “How else would you characterize the administration of Lupron to minors?

“Why is it that the left can accuse us of inciting hatred, but somehow it is dubious for us to point out that their actions, the actions of these candidates, demonstrate hatred of ordinary families and traditional ideas of gender identity?”

To illustrate what he called a double standard, Walsh said Beltran called her opponent a “MAGA extremist,” a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and the brand of nationalist politics it inspired.

“This is definitely hate speech from the left,” Walsh said, explaining that the hateful part is not calling the king a “MAGA,” but instead calling him an “extremist,” before using the same word to describe Democrats. “It’s a dog whistle for left-wing extremists, and it’s the reason why, as you know, Donald Trump has been shot – or tried to be shot – several times.”

Dina Martinez, chairwoman of the Washington Core Republicans, a moderate GOP group, objected to the state party’s rhetoric in text messages. In an interview, the nurse and Moses Lake City Council member said that if the Washington State Republican Party was “hoping to win hearts and minds,” it “missed badly.”

“What they said in Spanish is outrageous,” Martinez said, particularly offended by the idea that Democrats hate God.

“There are a lot of Christian Democrats and there are a lot of Christian Republicans. And if you call yourself a Christian, will you really use that language? You can’t assume that because someone is a Democrat they don’t believe in God and hate your family. No. No. This is so wrong.

In a message in Spanish, Washington GOP political director Matthew Frelich refers to himself as “Matteo” and drops Ruiz Kennedy’s Spanish last name, calling it only “Ana Kennedy.” An English-language message to voters in the heavily non-Hispanic Third Congressional District has the opposite result: calling the Democrat “Maria Perez,” using the wrong name and omitting her non-Hispanic last name.

In a text message, Froelich told The Spokesman-Review that calling Glusenkamp Perez by the wrong name — twice — was “just a typo.” He said he supported everything in the messages to voters, adding: “I don’t even understand why they’re upset about it.”

Martinez said she couldn’t know if the error was actually a typo: “But it doesn’t look right if they’re trying to hide a person’s identity, ethnicity, whatever you want to call it.”

Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat who campaigned Friday with Beltran, Dimas and Ruiz Kennedy, called the reports “despicable” and said they have “no place in politics.”

“The district that was created to protect voting rights is being attacked by text messages designed to intimidate and deceive the very voters the district was supposed to protect. The Republican Party must immediately stop spreading this false information. Other elected officials should also abandon these tactics.”

Cantwell’s Republican opponent, Dr. Raul Garcia, told The Spokesman-Review in a text message Sunday that the language was “unacceptable” and later sent a lengthy statement in which he expressed hope that more politicians would follow the example he and Cantwell set with their more respectful, policy-oriented campaigns.

Garcia also called the redistricting process that ousted state Sen. Nikki Torres and state Rep. Alex Ybarra an “obvious gerrymandering” that resulted in “the elimination of Latino representation.”

“As the first Latino U.S. Senator from Washington State, protecting people from cultures that have been marginalized for years is of the utmost importance to me,” Garcia said. “Personal attacks have no place and should be condemned on both sides. They don’t promote a unified path forward like the Americans.”

Martinez emphasized that mainstream Republicans and the state GOP are not always at odds, citing their cooperation earlier this year on a lawsuit related to language describing initiatives on the ballot, but she said she cannot condone “very egregious » wording on ballot papers. messages to voters.

“We need to tell the truth,” Martinez said. “That’s how people trust you. This is how you can convince people to listen to you.”