FIRST ON FOX: House Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., is taking aim at Georgia’s senior senator in a new ad highlighting the vulnerable Democrat’s stance on transgender student athletes.
Carter, who is running for Senate, is releasing a 30-second advertisement titled, “Ossoff Fan,” which features a purported transgender woman complaining about Carter’s own Republican stances. It opens by showing a transgender woman, played by a stubble-chinned biological male wearing a wig and a dress, sitting in a living room beside a dumbbell watching Carter on Fox News.
“He’s been MAGA from the beginning,” the person says on the phone. “He’s been loyal to Trump, defended him during impeachment.”
The person on the other line says, “And Buddy helped Trump at the border with deportations.”
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The transgender person picks up a trophy and says, “And preventing people like me from competing in women’s sports. Buddy Carter even believes there’s only two genders.”
“Now Buddy wants to help Trump in the Senate and beat Jon Ossoff,” the individual says. “It’s just not fair.” Meanwhile, the voice on the phone quips, “After all Ossoff has done for us!”
The ad ends with the transgender person picking up a sign with pink lettering that says, “Ossoff for Senate,” putting on a pair of wedge sandals, and stomping to their car.
The short but punchy advertisement signals that Republicans still believe the debate surrounding transgender inclusion is a potent issue for turning out voters in favor of the GOP. It proved to be a key issue in the 2024 general election, with moderate Democrats spending weeks after the fact decrying their own party’s intolerance to differing views.
Ossoff is a first-term lawmaker who was the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in the Peach State in roughly two decades. Republicans now view Ossoff’s seat as one of the most viable flip opportunities in the upcoming 2026 midterm cycle, when the GOP hopes to keep and expand upon its thin majority in the upper chamber.
Carter was the first Republican to jump into the contest after Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who was considered a heavy favorite to run against Ossoff, opted to forgo a Senate bid. Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King is also running in the race as a Republican.
Ossoff joined with all other Democratic senators to filibuster the bill from Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt, both Alabama Republicans, in March, effectively killing the legislation after it advanced out of the House earlier this year.
Their bill, called the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, is designed to bar transgender athletes from participating in federally funded school athletics at all levels, from elementary school to college.
It would amend Title IX to make it a violation for any school athletic program that receives federal funding to allow a biological male to participate in sports or activities that are meant for women or girls, and defines a person’s sex by their reproductive biology and genetics at birth.
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The measure is similar to an executive order from President Donald Trump in February that argued that the participation of biological men in women’s and girls’ sports was “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.”
The Carter campaign’s ad is also not the first time in the early days of the looming midterm cycle that the vulnerable senator has been targeted for his vote against the measure.
One Nation, a nonprofit advocacy group closely aligned with Senate Republican leadership, ran an ad last month that accused Ossoff of “running point for the radical left” with his vote to block the men in women’s sports bill.
Fox News Digital reached out to Ossoff’s campaign for comment on Carter’s ad but did not hear back by press time.
