North Carolina political ads have garnered national attention on at least two occasions already this year: once when local TV stations stopped broadcasting a GOP ad attacking Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cheri Beasley; and then again when a local district attorney launched a criminal investigation into whether state Attorney General Josh Stein broke a 90-year-old election law. Stein’s campaign has also argued more broadly that the ad isn’t any more misleading than ads aired by O’Neill and other political candidates. Hurtado, one of the Democrats targeted with the fake “defund the police” shirts, thinks lawmakers should find a way to ban political ads that present voters with false images of candidates.