Ted Cruz may have just lost the Republican porn vote.
On Thursday evening, the Texas senator’s presidential campaign pulled its new ad after it came to their attention that one of the actresses starring in it also appeared in soft-core porn flicks. (The apparently inadequate vetting was brought to light by BuzzFeed and The Daily Caller.) The actress Amy Lindsay—who has also done more mainstream, non-porn work such as an episode of Star Trek: Voyager— starred in movies such as Animal Lust, Co-Ed Confidential, and Carnal Wishes.
Team Cruz’s ad, titled “Conservatives Anonymous,” features a group-therapy session in which “voters” talk about their Marco Rubio buyer’s remorse. Here’s the spot:
A Cruz spokesman told BuzzFeed that Lindsay was “unfortunately… not vetted by the production company,” and “had the campaign known of her full filmography, we obviously would not have let her appear in the ad.”
Lindsay herself identifies as a Christian, Republican, and conservative, and had been deciding between supporting Cruz or Donald Trump. At the time, she told BuzzFeed that she found it “cool” that an actress who did soft-core porn could also appear in a Cruz ad.
Lindsay later vented her “extreme” disappointment with the campaign’s decision on Twitter:
Lindsay, a Texan who now lives in Los Angeles, also took to Facebook to complain about liberals waging a war on women, identify as “socially liberal,” and to reaffirm her commitment to the GOP.
“I’m voting republican period,” she wrote. “I honestly saw the ‘left’s’ war on women tonight!! Unbelievable…. So much for me staying out of political posts… but in the spirit of someone else: if they attack or defame me… hey I’m fighting back!”
And here’s Lindsay sharing one of the Media Research Center’s anti-gun-control parody videos last year:
Furthermore, here’s Lindsay cheering on marriage equality last May—something else that puts her at odds with Sen. Cruz:
Lindsay is something of an outlier, politically, in the porn world. Porn actors have overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, and have lately been widely Feeling the Bern. (For the past few decades, a Republican in the White House has been far more likely to wage a federal war on pornography than a Democratic president.) Perhaps a potential ideological ally for Lindsay is fellow porn actor Dick Chibbles, who has both played Donald Trump in a porn parody—and is a huge Donald Trump fan.
Lindsay did not respond to The Daily Beast’s requests for comment.