CFS operates from the headquarters of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), a "nerve center" of the American right-wing. Led by former Republican senator and Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint, with former Donald Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows as a senior advisor, CPI serves as an incubator for Trump loyalists to develop strategies.[1][2]
Citizens for Sanity claims that they are "not an ideological organization" but that they oppose "woke insanity".[3] According to Politico, the group has worked with Republican campaign consultants to run ads in swing districts.[3]
The group has run various billboards and television advertisements, generally focusing on transgender individuals and crime.[3] For example, one of their television ads focuses on transgender people in sports, showing a trans woman participating in a track meet and defeating all of her presumably cisgender competitors.[3] Many of the group's billboards sarcastically promote policies the group disagrees with, such as one which reads "Vote to keep our borders, jails and bathrooms open. Vote progressive", and another that reads "Too much freedom is a bad thing. Get your IRS audit today".[7]
The group's television ads were criticized by Will Bunch in The Philadelphia Inquirer, who claimed that they were "deliberately dishonest" and often displayed violent imagery during sports games, with no warnings for potentially upsetting content. Bunch wrote that the ads by Citizens for Sanity were even more extreme than the infamous Willie Horton ad.[5] Columnist Michael Hiltzik described one of their ads, which focused on illegal immigration, as "unbelievably racist". The ad, which ran during a 2022 playoff game between the San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Dodgers, characterized immigrants as criminals and claimed that illegal immigration is "draining your paychecks, wrecking your schools, ruining your hospitals, threatening your family".[7]
