Warren Buffett has lived in the same Omaha house since 1958. His name means something specific in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District, which is why a candidate would want it in an ad.
Brinker Harding put him in one. Buffett's family says nobody asked.
On September 2, Buffett's daughter Susie Buffett asked Harding to take the ad down.
"It implies that my dad endorses him. He did not have permission to use it," she said.
A week later, it was still running.
What Harding said back
Harding is the Republican nominee in Nebraska's 2nd District, running against Democrat Denise Powell and Libertarian Eric Foreman. His statement to KETV did not mention Susie Buffett's request at all.
Instead he defended the choice:
"In Nebraska, we work hard and support each other, and we do it honestly. Warren Buffett exemplifies that, and that was the point of my ad."
Read that again next to what he was being asked about. The ad's argument is that Nebraskans do things honestly. The complaint is that he used a private citizen's face without asking him.
Harding then pivoted to the ad's real subject, which is members of Congress enriching themselves:
"In Congress, Washington politicians get rich on secrets that Nebraskans will never know, and we need to fix it. This has been my message from day one, and it will be my message every day going forward."
KETV reported the spot was swapped out on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 8, and officially replaced on all stations the following night — roughly a week after the family asked.
He has done this before
This is not the first time someone has asked Brinker Harding to take something down and he has explained why he was right to post it instead.
Last fall, during the government shutdown, Harding joined the vice president's sombrero meme campaign with a video of his own. The woman who ran the Nebraska LULAC council he had asked to join in 2023 asked him to delete the video and apologize to the Latino community. He called the meme "an effective way" to make his point.
The pattern is not that he makes mistakes. It is what he does after he is told.
The message he has trouble with
Harding says the ad's message is that Washington politicians get rich on secrets Nebraskans never see. That is his signature pitch, and it is the one part of his record that has already collided with the law.
Federal law requires House candidates to file a financial disclosure telling voters what they own. Harding ignored that requirement for ten months — the disclosure that would have shown Nebraskans exactly what he owns — and only filed after Democrats referred him to the Justice Department.
So the ad's message is that voters deserve to see what politicians are holding. The candidate delivering it spent most of a year not telling them, and delivered the message using a man who never agreed to be in it.
The bottom line
Susie Buffett asked Brinker Harding on September 2 to stop running an ad that uses her father's image, saying it implies an endorsement Warren Buffett never gave and that Harding never had permission to use it. The ad kept running until the night of September 9. Harding's only public response defended the ad, praised Buffett, argued that Nebraskans "do it honestly," and never addressed the request — the same response he gave the LULAC leader who asked him to delete a sombrero video last fall.
Source
Buffett's daughter asks Harding to remove campaign ad — Connor Schmidt, KETV NewsWatch 7, September 9, 2026. Image: KETV.
