Harris County commissioner candidate apologizes after altering challenger’s face in campaign ads

A Harris County commissioner candidate has apologized after a series of negative ads from her campaign featured altered images of her Asian-American opponent.

Precinct 4 candidate Lesley Briones issued an apology to her opponent Ben Chou and the Asian-American community via a statement posted on Facebook late Sunday evening following the controversial campaign ads, which launched on social media May 18.

Chou’s facial features, including his mouth and eyes, appear to be modified in the photos. The ads also appear to have lightened his skin. Chou’s campaign called out the ads, saying they follow “a long history of doctoring images of people of color to make them look angry or menacing.”

In her statement, Briones blamed her campaign’s graphic designer for the changes made to Chou’s appearance and claimed she had no prior knowledge of the alterations.

“The graphic designer, without any direction from the campaign, used a Photoshop filter to remove my opponent’s smile and apply a black-and-white filter,” she wrote. “As soon as I was notified, I instructed my team to remove the ad; it was taken down within minutes.”

Briones continued, writing: “Good leaders take responsibility and demand accountability; that graphic designer no longer works from the campaign. I apologize to my opponent that this event occurred and to the Asian-American community for the pain it has caused.”

Briones also denied any accusations of racism. “Unfortunately, my opponent has attempted to capitalize on this incident by making unfounded claims of racism against me,” she wrote. “As a woman of color who is raising three Mexican-American daughters, I reject his charges in the strongest of terms.”

The apology follows Briones previously accusing Chou of lying about the ads and exploiting the incident to further his campaign. She also accused Chou of darkening her skin in his campaign ads. “Shame on Ben Chou,” Briones wrote on Twitter Thursday. “Rather than answering for his false attacks and defamatory lies, he is spreading even more lies.”

Just hours before Briones’s apology Sunday, Chou stated that days after the ads first surfaced, Briones had not yet apologized to him. “It’s been 5 days since @LesleyBrionesTX’s campaign doctored my face in a series of racist hit pieces – and refused to take any accountability,” Chou wrote. “Our campaign demanded one, and they’ve refused. The Asian community and all Harris County voters deserve an apology.”

“At a time when anti-Asian hate is rising, I’m calling on Briones to apologize because the ads seek to reinforce negative stereotypes that have been peddled for more than a century,” Chou wrote. “How can we expect Briones to represent us if she’s unwilling to acknowledge anti-Asian racism?”

In a separate statement Monday, Chou said Briones has not reached out to him personally and stated that blaming a filter for the extent to which his appearance was modified was a “poor excuse.” He also denied claims made by Briones’s campaign that he doctored images of her in his ads by darkening her skin.

“This was a deliberate attempt to manipulate my facial features (eyes, mouth, and skin color) and the end result was a racist ad, and when a campaign puts out racist material, the responsibility lies with the candidate,” Chou wrote. “Regardless of the intent behind Judge Briones’ racist ads, they negatively impacted me and people like me and are a reminder of the importance of electing diverse candidates to office.”

Chou and Briones are just a day away from facing off in a May 24 runoff election for the Harris County Precinct 4 Democratic nomination after neither candidate secured at least 50 percent of the votes during the primary election in March [CHRON].