It seems that Mark Ellmore’s campaign has been caught red-handed spreading blatant falsehoods about his opponent in Tuesday’s primary election.
First, in a flyer that went out last week, the Ellmore campaign states that Singh said he would not vote for John McCain and attributed the quote to an interview at Blacknell.net. The problem is that Singh said no such thing in the Blacknell interview:
This evening I received a copy of the above mailer from the Singh campaign (which told me that one of its staffers received it in the mail today). Several quotes and positions are attributed to interviews published here at Blacknell.net. Of singular concern to me is the first bulleted statement on the top left of the mailer – “Amit said he will not vote for John McCain in November – Interview with Blacknell.net 3/26/08″. Nowhere on Blacknell.net will you find any statement or quote from Amit Singh that even gets close to implying such a thing, and at no time in my interview with Amit Singh did he make such a statement. The Ellmore campaign mailer is – in a word – false.
That was mis-statement #1, mis-statement # 2 is reported in today’s Washington Post:
A flier put out by Mark W. Ellmore’s campaign days before Tuesday’s U.S. House Republican primary in Northern Virginia falsely attributes material to The Washington Post, an error pointed out by his opponent and confirmed by Ellmore’s staff yesterday.
Ellmore is running against Amit Singh in the primary for a chance to challenge Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), a nine-term incumbent.
The flier, which hit some mailboxes Friday, attributes the following photo caption to The Post: “Amit Singh with his political mentor Libertarian Ron Paul, who reportedly has plans to disrupt the Republican Convention in Minneapolis.” Those words never appeared in the newspaper or as a quote elsewhere, and the photograph was not taken by The Post.
A spokesman for the Ellmore campaign said that the item was written by the staff to describe the accompanying photo and that the description of Paul’s intentions refers to an article in the Los Angeles Times.
The emphasis above is mine, because it points out what I can only describe as mis-statement # 3. There are a number of articles at the L.A. Times web site that reference Ron Paul, and two of them, here and here, talk about the Republican National Convention and Paul delegates who plan to demonstrate (an activity that was protected by the First Amendment the last time I checked, by the way). Amit Singh’s name isn’t mentioned anywhere in those articles.
The Ellmore campaign says it was a mistake:
“This was an honest mistake,” spokesman Mike Lane said. “This was not something that was a preplanned dirty trick.”
Quite honestly, though, its hard to think of something as being an honest mistake when it turns out to have been a complete falsehood made up out of whole cloth.
Singh’s campaign, understandably, is perturbed:
“We being attacked is one thing, and we expect that. Unfortunately, that is the nature of the political system we live in,” Singh’s campaign spokesman, Navdeep Singh, said. “But what disturbed us is we see attributed quotes on here that are completely false, completely made up.”
I will say this much for Ellmore, he would be qualified to replace Jim Moran in one respect, they both seem to have an interesting commitment to the truth.
So does Amit strongly condemn the actions of his fellow Ron Paul supporters in trying to disrupt the convention? Does Amit fully endorse John McCain for President and intend to vote for him instead of writing in Ron Paul’s name or voting for Bob Barr?
Didn’t think so.
The sources may have needed tweaking but the content of the flyer is right: Amit is a libertarian, not a Republican. Amit is anti military and his position on Iraq isn’t all that different from Moran. Hell, with that and his lack of support for his own party’s leader, just what kind of contrast is Amit supposed to be for Moran again? Amit’s running to be part of the McCain/Gilmore ticket here in VA and yet he’s already on the record trashing one and refuses to flatly and unconditionally state his support for his party’s leader. He doesn’t have to agree with McCain on everything to support him, I’m sure he agrees with him more than Barrack Obama? (or one would hope?)
Darius,
1. Evidence, or your allegations are just that, allegations.
2. Since when did believing in individual liberty become a sin in the Republican Party ?
Best quote of the Campaign:
“The Amit Singh supporters are a bunch of Ron Paul wingnuts,” said Mike Lane, former chairman of the Eighth District Republican Committee. “They’re very active, very enthused and very crazy. Our challenge will be keeping them from hijacking a low-turnout election.”
http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?article=315722&paper=59&cat=104
McCain won free primaries to become our nominee and defacto Party leader. Romney, Huckabee, Rudy and other candidates and their supporters understand that and have rallied around McCain. Ron Paul has not joined in uniting the party. He had the chance to make his case for why he should be the nominee and leader and he lost. Ron Paul should do the right thing and acknowledge the vast majority of the party has rejected him and join in trying to win for November. What’s more free and representative than a primary election?
I apologize if my first response was a little harsh. I’m a national security guy so I get a little bit worked up sometimes. If Amit has a statement or interview where he states that he will be voting for McCain or does not support efforts of others to disrupt the convention, please feel free to post a link as I have not yet found anything despite searching.
Darius,
First of all, your comments would be relevant if Ron Paul were a candidate for the Republican nomination in Virginia’s 8th CD. He’s not.
Second, unless you have evidence that Singh has said what Ellmore attributed to him, then at least admit that the Ellmore campaign
fabricatedlied.Freddie,
Ellmore’s biggest challenge should be explaining why he has any better chance of unseating Moran than any of the other “conventional” Republicans who have gone up against him.
A typical “old guard” Republican tactic is to time a mailing with falsehoods and innuendo to arrive just a day or so before the election, so the opponent is smeared and the Press and the public have no time to investigate the charges. Gilmore did it to Marshall, now Ellmore shows his true colors by trying to slime Amit Singh.
I had thought that Mr. Ellmore was a good man for this job, in part out of respect his climb up the ladder of success. Now, I think of him as just another Nixonian Republican; willing to do any sleazy act just to gain an advantage. Those mailings were no “honest mistake.” They were intended to smear Amit and timed to do it so that he could not respond.
On the broader issue of Mr. Singh supporting the Party nominee, this is irrelevant. For too long the fascists among our Party have crowed that 100% loyalty is required. Well, only stupid people blindly support a candidate based on Party label.
The fact that Amit Singh reserves the right to still use his brain, indicates that he is better equipped to represent the People of the Eighth District. Had we had more men like Amit in Congress during Bush’s tenure, Bush would not have been able to trample our Constitution and run up a trillion dollar debt in an undeclared war.
Ellmore alleges that Amit Singh is not a lock-step fascist who will always vote the Party line. If true, Mr. Ellmore has given the People a great reason to come out on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 and vote for Amit Singh. Amit Singh will represent the citizens of the Eighth District and will NEVER be a rubber stamp for big government Republicans and their multinational corporate owners.
I started out neutral in this race, but due to Elmmore’s Nixonian dirty tricks, I am now 100% in favor of Amit Singh. I will work at the polls for Amit on Tuesday.
Tyler,
On this I agree with you 100%
[...] As I noted earlier today, there’s a late-developing controversy in the Republican race in the 8th District over allegations made in a mailing sent out by the Ellmore campaign. [...]
[...] 8th District and I’ve endorsed Amit Singh in that race, but if that’s not enough, the despicable, dishonest tactics of his opponent are reason enough to vote for [...]