At a Black voters forum on Staten Island earlier this week, staffers for Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ reelection campaign handed out flyers featuring pictures of the Republican congresswoman appearing alongside African-American constituents.
But the flyer contains an awkward mishap: Malliotakis’ face is digitally altered in one of the photos on the pamphlet that shows her standing next to Tony Herbert, a Brooklyn community activist who’s currently an aide in Mayor Adams’ office, the Daily News has learned.
Jasmine Robinson, who helped organize Tuesday’s 2024 election forum on Staten Island and was handed one of the flyers, said she became angry upon realizing the campaign literature contained a doctored image, especially since Malliotakis didn’t show up to the event despite being invited.
“It’s insulting that she would try to gaslight the Black community and think we would not catch on to this deception. That’s what this is: Deception,” said Jasmine Robinson, the first vice president of Staten Island’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People who shared a copy of the flyer with The News.
“It’s bad enough that she skipped a candidate forum while Congress was on recess,” Robinson added. “It’s absolutely disgraceful that this was done.”
A spokesman for Malliotakis, who represents all of Staten Island and a slice of southern Brooklyn, confirmed the picture on the flyer was digitally modified using artificial intelligence.
“Unbeknownst to the campaign, a graphic artist used Artificial Intelligence to remove the sunglasses from the Congresswoman’s face,” said Malliotakis rep Rob Ryan, who didn’t identify the artist. “A draft was then sent to the campaign and a campaign volunteer mistakenly printed out the unapproved version of the piece for distribution at an event. This action was in error. The piece in question has never been mailed out.”
The original image was taken in 2017 while Malliotakis was on the campaign trail during her unsuccessful run for New York City mayor. Ryan shared the unaltered photo with The News, and it shows Malliotakis wearing a pair of black sunglasses that aren’t in the AI image.
The flyer, which features a “Nicole Malliotakis for Congress” stamp, says it was paid for by the New York Republican Party’s federal campaign committee. A party official said late Thursday the New York GOP wasn’t responsible for designing the flyer.
Herbert, a perennial local political candidate who works as an aide in the mayor’s Community Affairs Unit at City Hall, didn’t return calls and messages.
The rest of flyer features genuine photos of Malliotakis appearing alongside African-American constituents, including two surviving members of the “Black Angels,” a group of nurses who treated thousands of tuberculosis patients on Staten Island decades ago.
“Delivering for our community,” the flyer reads in bold.
Tuesday’s event was a forum for candidates running for Staten Island-based seats in Congress and the state Legislature in the Nov. 5 election.
Among the candidates who did attend the forum was Andrea Morse, a Democratic lawyer who’s running against Malliotakis in next month’s race.
Malliotakis, who was elected to her U.S. House of Representatives seat in 2021, is New York City’s only Republican in Congress. She’s heavily favored to beat Morse in the Nov. 5 election.
Malliotakis has faced heat once before for digitally altered political material.
In 2020, the Brooklyn Conservative Party posted an image on Instagram that Malliotakis had been photoshopped into showing her delivering masks, gloves and other personal protection equipment to first responders during the COVID pandemic. At the time, the Brooklyn Conservative Party took full credit for the photoshopped image and said it was part of a series of ads meant to highlight candidates doing work in their communities.