Frisco City Council candidates deny responsibility for mailers that connect Muslim candidate to Ilhan Omar, Sharia law

Political mailers sent to Frisco residents on Friday were a last-minute attempt to smear their campaigns, two candidates for the City Council Place 6 race said.

Sadaf Haq — the first Muslim woman to run for Frisco City Council — said the mailers were a direct attack on her faith. Brian Livingston, the incumbent, said he believes Haq’s campaign sent the mailers in an attempt to make him look like the “bad guy” who sent them.

The third candidate in the race, Sai Krishna, did not return a request for comment.The mailers have a return address from Houston that matches one for VoterWorks USA, a vendor used for digital advertising, that has received $16,000 from Haq’s campaign since July 1, according to campaign finance data.

Haq said she believes whoever sent the mailers used that address and sent them to make it appear as if her campaign were responsible. They also sent the mailers to some of the addresses of donors found on her campaign finance report, she said.

“We know that this was an intentional red herring because the mailers were mailed in one day with stamps purchased in Frisco,” Haq said.

One sought to connect Haq with U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and listed what it called “radical statements” from Omar, who is a Muslim woman.

It read: “Sadaf Haq claims to be a uniter, but she supports a radical leftist who hates America. … Ilhan Omar is wrong for America … Sadaf Haq is wrong for Frisco … Don’t be fooled by fancy rhetoric.”

The second mailer purported to be from Muslims who support Haq, though she said no one she knew from the Islamic community received one. Both mailers claimed that she supports Sharia law, the guidance Muslims follow to live an Islamic life. Haq said she does not support implementing it to influence U.S. policies and systems.

Livingston denied any affiliation with the mailers and said he believes her campaign sent them in a “last-ditch attempt” to make him look bad. He has previously said that Haq’s campaign has tried to “bait” him into making religion part of the race, but that he has rejected it.

“At the last second, they’ve done everything they can to make this about religion,” Livingston said, adding that he doesn’t want the Frisco community to view him as a ”racist, xenophobic ass.”

“It’s easy to make the tall conservative white guy the bad guy,” he said.

Haq said that although Livingston may not have sent the mailers, she believes his supporters did, and that the mailers represent the Frisco community’s rejection of her Islamic faith, which is hurtful to her and her family.

She said they weren’t unexpected because members of a North Texas political Facebook group warned in late August that there would be an “October surprise” waiting for her.

The mailer featuring Omar, the Minnesota Democrat, does not accurately represent Haq’s beliefs or who she is, she said.