Some Republicans have been all huffy over Tim Kaine’s recent “Club for Growth” mailer, and it turns out to have been for good cause — the State Board of Elections found that the mailer was misleading, and fined the Kaine campaign $100, as Bob Lewis reports for the AP. So supporters of Republican Jerry Kilgore would have something to crow about. Would.
Just a few hours after word of the fine came out on Friday, Lewis penned another story, this time about a Kilgore mailer:
As Republican lawyers urged state election officials Friday to punish Democrat Tim Kaine for a gubernatorial campaign mailing that impersonated official GOP fliers, voters received brochures from Republican Jerry Kilgore replete with an official Democratic donkey logo.
“Democrat and progressive voters” received Kilgore’s disguised fliers even as a Republican Governors Association lawyer, on Kilgore’s behalf, persuaded the State Board of Elections to fine Kaine $100 for “dishonest and deceptive campaign tactics.”
Besides the GOP elephant logo, the cover of Kaine’s mailing last month bore the words “For Virginia Republicans.” Inside, it repeated a conservative, anti-tax Virginia Club for Growth’s attack on Kilgore for failing to sign its no-tax-increase pledge or back its tax-slashing agenda.
On the outside face page of Kilgore’s last-minute mailing is the red-and-blue Democratic donkey emblem.
[…]
[T]the true origin is discernible only from a line of small, thin type printed diagonally alongside a photo. They look like photo credits.
The Virginia Democratic Party immediately filed a complaint with the State Board of Elections, who will presumably hold the Kilgore campaign to the same standard as the Kaine campaign.
I can understand that the Kaine campaign went mucking around in a gray area (at least, it’s gray to me) of campaign finance, and they got caught. They should have known better, because they’re experts and I’m not. But with Kilgore throwing a hissy fit over the mailer, insisting that it’s just plain wrong, it’s nothing short of utter hypocrisy for his campaign to turn around and send a conceptually-identical mailing.
Of course, Kilgore’s campaign did it for the same reason that Kaine’s did — these mailings work. What we need to do as Virginia citizens is lobby the General Assembly to provide enough disincentives such that such mailings do not work — the legal penalties should be great enough for intentional deception that the tradeoff isn’t worth it.
Anyhow, props to the Kilgore staff for blowing a great opportunity to go after Kaine on what was very briefly a legitimate issue. Y’all are great.
Is it true that Kaine was fined $100?
I mean, hell, if you’re Kilgore, and you can already say “Well he did it.” Why not just send out thousands of these things?
We need election reform.
We need paper trails for our voting machines.
We need to close the officeholder/lobbyist revolving door.
We need public financing of elections.
Anybody who doesn’t see this has got to be on something or on somebody’s payroll.
I personally don’t see anything wrong with it as long as the essence of the charges were true.
Having not seen either of the mailers in question. Those types of mailers (purposefully misleading ones) are pretty common, and legal, in other states.
In any event I’m not terribly disturbed by the whole situation. It is after all “politics.” And I’m the kinda person that always reads the “fine print.”
You can see the Kilgore mailing here:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/11/5/204052/360
The big difference is that Kaine’s mailing said it was FOR Republicans,
while Kilgore’s says it is FROM Democrats. The courts will have to lay it out.
How big a hypocrite is Kilgore that he’d send his lawyers to scream at the SBE about Kaine,
while simultaneously doing the same and worse? As Larry Sabato says, “Hypocrisy is the lifeblood of politics.”
It’s last minute desperation because things are coming together for the Kaine campaign, Democrats are excited, while Republicans are feeling pretty rotten these days with good reason.
Little more hypocrisy for ya, or you can use the old-fashioned word, which is LIES