A Ted Cruz Ad Used This Man’s Image For Anti-Trans Fearmongering. Now He’s Speaking Out.

When Mack Beggs first learned that Texas Republicans were using images of him from his high school wrestling days in political ads, he wasn’t exactly surprised.

This election cycle, Republicans have spent millions of dollars on ads that depict drag queens and transgender athletes and celebrities, in an attempt to stoke fears about Democrats supporting basic rights, such as health care, for trans people.

In September, the Texas GOP released a mailer ad attacking Rep. Colin Allred (D), who is attempting to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R). The ad includes an image of Beggs with his face blurred out, and text that reads: “Colin Allred failed to protect women’s sports, supporting boys competing with girls.”

In a separate mailer ad, Republican Marc LaHood’s campaign targets his Democratic opponent, Laurel Jordan Swift, in the race for state House District 121. In that ad, Beggs’ face is clearly visible in a photo of him pinning down his opponent, a cisgender girl.

“She’s one of my good friends,” Beggs, who is trans, told HuffPost of his opponent in the photo. “We talked about that years ago when it first came out. It looks like I’m choking her out, but it’s a wrestling move ― it’s called a ‘cross face’ pinning combination. If you know wrestling, then you understand that’s a move we use in order to send somebody to the mat.”

Beggs said the ads are deliberately misleading.

“They’re just really desperate,” he said of the GOP’s anti-trans blitz. “The fact that I’m 25 years old and [they’re] using my image from like eight years ago, come on now. It’s crazy that [they] can’t think of anything else to help [their] campaign and prove to the people of Texas that [they’re] qualified to represent us.”

The Texas Republican Party and LaHood’s campaign did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.

Beggs made national headlines in 2017 and 2018 for winning the Texas girls state wrestling championship. He had petitioned the University Interscholastic League ― the Texas organization that governs athletic and academic contests at public schools ― to let him compete in the men’s division. But the UIL rejected his request, saying athletes were required to compete based on the gender listed on their birth certificates. A parent also filed a lawsuit to try to stop Beggs from competing.

As Beggs became the face of debates over the participation of trans athletes, the Texas legislature tried to advance a bill, created to curb student athlete steroid use, that would have required trans athletes to turn over their medical information to the UIL. The bill died in committee in 2017.

Beggs told HuffPost that his journey as a trans athlete, his challenges and his triumphs, have gotten muddled in political debates. He said he feels like people across the political spectrum forget about his time competing against other men with USA Wrestling, which didn’t have the same restrictions as UIL.

“It’s almost like my story is kind of getting lost within this fight on both sides,” Beggs said. “It’s kind of disheartening.”

He said the attack ads falsely try to portray him as Republicans’ boogeyman du jour: a person who transitions in order to compete against cisgender women. But they leave out the reality that Beggs had to face as a trans male competitive athlete.

When he started his medical transition, Beggs began to take testosterone as well as a puberty blocker to suppress female puberty. He said that in order to still be able to compete in the women’s wrestling division — since the UIL barred him from the men’s ― he had to take a very low dose of testosterone. He now believes the low dosage hindered his growth and delayed the process he was looking forward to.

“I was pretty much killing my body in a sense just so I could compete in the women’s division,” he said.

Over the past three years, Republicans have increasingly made noise about the supposed need to protect cis women and girls from trans athletes ― particularly trans women ― even though there is little evidence to support the idea that female trans athletes have an unfair advantage in sports.

Twenty-five states have passed restrictions on trans athletes participating in school sports that align with their gender identity, and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has promised to ban trans athletes from women’s sports if he is elected.

Beggs, who is considering legal action over the use of his image, isn’t alone in trying to push back against the attack ads. An Oregon school district recently asked Cruz to take down an ad targeting trans athletes that features two female cisgender minors whose families say they were not consulted.

Environmental activist and drag queen Pattie Gonia, whose real name is Wyn Wiley, also unexpectedly found themselves in the Trump campaign’s most-aired ad, which targets Vice President Kamala Harris’ record of supporting gender-affirming care. In one clip, Harris is seen posing for photos with Wiley at a 2022 Pride Month event. Wiley has indicated that they are weighing legal action against the campaign.

“Is this seriously the best they’ve got?” Wiley said in an Instagram post. “No, the Trump campaign did not have my permission to use my name or likeness. Yes, we are reviewing our legal options, and yes, I’m going to do what queer people always do ― turn our pain into something positive.”

As Beggs’ high school athletic career has once again been thrust into the national spotlight, he wants people to know that young trans athletes have a future beyond the debates and legislation over their bodies, and that they need to be supported. Beggs, who lives in Fort Worth, Texas, now trains Muay Thai and Brazilian jiujitsu, and has found a dojo and a team that have embraced him fully as a trans man.

He knows firsthand the stress of living under a microscope, and emphasized the importance of uplifting trans youth during this tumultuous election cycle.

“We just want to be left alone. We just want to live our best lives and not have these laws trying to prevent us from doing what we do best, and that’s being good at the sport we do,” Beggs said. “We just want to be treated like any other athlete.”

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