Michigan GOP Senate candidate says there's 'no excuse' for swastika accidentally appearing in ad

John James.
(Image credit: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Michigan's Republican Senate candidate, businessman John James, said on Monday "there's no excuse" for his campaign running a television ad that inadvertently showed a swastika.

The swastika appeared on a bulletin board in a school hallway, which was shown while James spoke off-screen about failing schools, The Associated Press reports. James said the ad used stock footage, and he had to "admit this was a terrible error on our part. We should have caught this error and we didn't, and there's no excuse." James, who is running against Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D), said he is "responsible for everything that our team does and fails to do, and I will do everything in my power to make sure this never, ever happens again."

James is black and said he does "not approve of hatred or bigotry in any form," and anyone saying otherwise is proof of "how low people are willing to go." Progress Michigan, a liberal advocacy group, brought attention to the imagery on Monday, and executive director Lonnie Scott told AP not having a swastika in an ad should "be a pretty basic thing to figure out," adding that this shows "James' lack of preparedness for the United States Senate."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.