Large "Mike France for Congress" signs that say “Build More Subs!” have popped up in the region, with the outline of a submarine in the middle. There are other places France uses pictures of submarines, too, but a look at those pictures raised concerns for me about his credibility on this topic. Image searching showed that the submarine outlined on those large signs hasn’t been built in almost 30 years.

The submarine in his campaign Facebook profile’s cover photo doesn’t look like an American one. Joe Courtney’s campaign called him out on using that same non-American-looking submarine in 2022, but France only fixed it on one platform and not on Facebook, where he still posts frequently.

These details matter, and politicians have stumbled over them before. In 2012, the Democratic National Convention had to apologize for displaying Russian ships. If you are going to run on your U.S. Navy experience, and put up big signs about building submarines around the “Submarine Capital of the World,” you have to get those details right, if you want to be taken seriously.

Jacob Hurt

Gales Ferry