A Republican running for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina is running a television ad across the Palmetto State touting the 10 times he has gone to jail protesting abortion.
Richard Cash — a small business owner and longtime pro-life activist who is one of the several Republicans challenging incumbent GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham — was arrested 10 times between 1989 and 1993 as he took part in peaceful sit-ins and prayed on the sidewalk outside abortion clinics.
“These were what you would call peaceful sit-ins, which meant we were just a group of 50 of 250 who would go sit down in front of the door of an abortion clinic and effectively shut the place down until the police arrived and arrested us and hauled us off,” Cash recalled in an interview with The Daily Caller on Monday.
“The reason we put this commercial out is there’s a lot of people who really don’t trust Lindsey Graham anymore,” Cash said. “They don’t trust that he’ll take a stand and do what South Carolina wants.”
Asked specifically his arguments against Graham, Cash cited Graham’s votes for for liberal Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan and how close recent religious liberty cases before the court have been.
Polling suggests Graham may be able to sail through his primary on June 10. But Cash and the other challengers are hoping to keep the senator under 50 percent in that election to force him into a runoff.
“He is the Democrat’s favorite Republican,” Cash said in an interview. “Because he’s all about always wanting to be on the inside of the deal. He wants to be the go-to man that the Democrats come to.”
Here is Cash’s ad:
Here is Cash explaining his arrests: