When they start concentrating on stories like this, you know they’re worried about November:
RICHMOND, Va. — A YouTube video shows the billionaire co-founder of Black Entertainment Television pretending to stutter as she mocks a candidate for governor in Virginia.
Here’s the video:
We need someone who can really communicate. And Bob McDonnell can communicate. The other people that I talk to, especially his op-op-op-op-op-op opponent could not articulate what needed to be done. He did this all through my interview with him.
Sheila Johnson, of course, is supporting Bob McDonnell in this years Governor’s race and so we quickly saw Virginia Democrats trying to tar the McDonnell campaign for something one of his supporters said at an event that the candidate didn’t even attend. Johnson, meanwhile, has since apologized for her comments on the video, and Bob McDonnell himself is taking the position that the apology ends the issue:
Republican Bob McDonnell was asked what responsibility he bears for Sheila Johnson’s videotaped comments mocking Democrat Creigh Deeds’s speaking style and whether he would apologize for it. McDonnell did not apologize. Instead, he said that he knew that Johnson had issued a statement “she believed was appropriate.” He went on to try to explain what he thought Johnson was trying to express in her comments.
“Listen,” he told reporters. “Senator Deeds hasn’t had any problem for the last two months viciously attacking me on any number of things that misrepresented my position. So I think he’s a very good spokesman for his cause. … The reason she’s supporting me, that she said at the announcement speech, is that she believes I’ve got the best ideas on jobs, the economy and economic development.”
“What she was saying, is what I understood her to say … is that Senator Deeds hasn’t been able to put together a comprehensive plan, a positive vision about where he’s going to take Virginia. Now that’s what I understood from Sheila’s statement.”
That should be the end of it. McDonnell didn’t make the joke, he wasn’t there when the joke was made. Trying to turn this into a macaca moment is, quite simply, a sign of desperation from a campaign that knows it has very few options left.
Sheila Johnson is a no-class act. And she has apologized!