She said that she thought he’d give her a campaign contribution for sex or confidential political information. He said that it was all fiction.

In early May, Democrat Melissa Fazli publicly announced her sexual harassment allegations against California’s 39th District Democratic congressional candidate Gil Cisneros. Later, she explained that it was all a misunderstanding. But despite the reality of the situation, in the era of the #MeToo movement, such “he said, she said” situations have been far too often brazenly manipulated for private political gains.

Fazli’s story has been appallingly misrepresented, without her consent, by the opposing Republican political action committee Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) as part of a campaign to maintain the current Republican majority in the House of Representatives. CLF launched two television advertisements Aug. 23 and Sept. 6 and countless other fliers to condemn Cisneros, deceptively labelling him a heartless serial rapist “demanding sex in exchange for campaign cash.” Despite the fact that CLF has currently withdrawn the ads, the problem remains in that it should never have weaponized the woman’s story in the first place to smear the character of another candidate.

Smear campaigns and mudslinging hurt all of the people involved, misleading voters and shamefully disrespecting innocents. The blatant inaccuracies of the two ads, which even Fazli has described as “vile,” only undermine the integrity of this race, which is the one that Democrats are putting their hopes on to help them gain a majority in the House of Representatives.

For this Nov. 6 election, don’t buy into smear campaigns; vote for who you think is best based on fact, not fiction.