A Dunmore drag performer is an unwilling political symbol in the congressional battle between U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan and Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti.<\/p>\n
Frank Carey, who performs as Lady Lydia, is upset that a photo of he and Cognetti and used in a television ad supporting Bresnahan. Cognetti, a Democrat, is running Nov. 3 to unseat Bresnahan, a Republican, in the 8th Congressional District.<\/p>\n
A GoFundMe campaign has been set up to raise money for legal fees to fight the use of Carey\u2019s image and drag persona. It had collected $2,070 as of Monday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was certainly never a situation I expected to find myself in, and asking for help isn\u2019t always easy,\u201d Carey wrote in a public Facebook post. \u201cBut sometimes you have to stand up and say enough is enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
The photo of Cognetti and Lady Lydia appears in the ad as the narration claims Cognetti is \u201ca member of the radical group trying to force grown men in girls\u2019 bathrooms and women\u2019s sports.\u201d Carey wrote that he supports Cognetti \u201c100 percent\u201d but the ad is \u201cdisrespectful and disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ad was paid for by NRCC and authorized by Rob for PA and approved by Rob Bresnahan, a disclaimer states. Requests for comment were not immediately returned by\u00a0Carey nor the candidates\u2019 campaigns.<\/p>\n
The 8th Congressional District includes all of Lackawanna, Wayne and Pike and parts of Luzerne and Monroe counties.<\/p>\n
This story is developing. Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Dunmore drag performer is an unwilling political symbol in the congressional battle between U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[836,201,182,883,803,3296,139,28,50,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-267045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-election","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-local-politics","tag-luzerne-county","tag-national-politics","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-politics","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}