I never would have guessed this story would get this kind of coverage.

Prof. Johnson-Cartee's analogy to graffiti is priceless.

I do have one small problem with the report.  The audio and visuals weren't great on the version of the ad I viewed online, but did the ad really mention "pitin" anywhere?

Hugo's panicky irrational reaction (I went negative, because Simmons mentions my vote on abusive driver fees.) shows how much Hugo knows he blew it.

It'll be fascinating to see if Hugo really does spend $150K to run that garbage again.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing reports on the report in other outlets.

Does anyone have any predictions about whether the Post will endorse Simmons?

and it's front page.  I wonder how much free advertising THAT is worth for Rex Simmons? :)  Anyway, let Hugo spend his money on a nasty ad that has now backfired.  Let him defend abuser fees.  Let him defend the record of the Republican legislature in this state on pretty much anything.  Let him, in other words, give us even ONE reason why voters should re-elect him and NOT vote for Rex Simmons, an eminently qualified, smart, moderate alternative. 

I am not so sure the ad in truth "backfired" at least from the voters perspective because it puts that race center stage as people debate the issue of the ad. It as brought attention to a race they may have otherwise not gotten wide attention outside of that district. Now people will be really looking at the records and visions I think. All press is good press for RK I guess. We will see how it plays out for Hurricane Hugo.

Chuck Caputo during the last legislative session tried to get some funding for a volunteer group called Best Buddies International.  BBI seeks to pair disabled and non-disabled students.  http://www.bestbuddi...  Delegate Hugo in particular mocked Chuck's effort for a group which tries to mainstream into society those with a disability.  You can hear Hugo's diatribe at
http://assemblyacces... 

(Hugo's underlying argument was as silly as it was mean-spirited.  To Hugo, because the Democrats were saying you should not raid the general fund for transportation, they should not seek money from the general fund for otherwise worthwhile projects.)

Hugo tells the Post that he knows who posted the statements he uses in his ad. He knows that the poster is not part of the RK "Editorial Board".  So he is lying when he says the statement came from RK.

To go back to an analogy used earlier this week, it is like posting a rumour on a bathroom wall and citing the school as the source of the information.

Now that the Post has made this a public issue, we need to demand that Cox and the other cable outlets reject further airings of the ad.

Mark Itzkoff (AKA Glant)

at Daily Kos is touching on this, but it could use some fleshing out.

If Hugo was so confident the comments could be attributed to de la Piedra, why didn't he attribute them to de la Piedra directly?  So shady.

Reminds me of Jay O'Brien's mailer lask week claiming that George Barker "will not enforce immigration" and citing RK as it's reference.  (I tried to reach O'Brien's campaign at the phone number listed on their website, but there was no answer.)

Wonders never cease.  Hugo is in not position to try taking the high road against Rex Simmons.  While Simmons has had a distinguished career as a federal civil service  auditor, working to make government cleaner and more efficient, Hugo has had several questional professional ties:  as chief of staff to Congressman Bud Shuster, who was reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for his role in a transportation scandal; later, as a lobbyist who brought into his CapNet firm Ann Eppard, a former Shuster chief of staff who pleaded quilty to receiving improper payments; and later, as a member of a lobbying firm headed by former Congressmen Bob Livingston, who resigned from the Congress because of his own, personal scandal.  I hope that the Simmons campaign or others are able to generate more public awareness of Hugo's pattern of shady connections.  If anyone deserves to be on the receiving end of a negative campaign, it is Hugo.

1)  Rex Simmons was running against Morris Meyer.

2)  Morris Meyer hired Nate, and Nate even got a WaPo article on his NGD group that basically only existed to support people paying him.  NGD changed their rules after accepting money so they could support Morris "unlimited". 

3)  Morris Meyer got his ass handed to him in the primary because he ran an awful campaign.

4)  Nate who has SIGNED HIS NAME TO COMMENTS FROM PITIN BEFORE (http://www.raisingka...) came on after the primary AS PITIN to attack Rex and leave those comments.

How could the general election opponent NOT use comments from a staffer during the primary that said these things?

This wasn't a "heat of the moment" in the middle of a "hot primary".  These comments were made AFTER MORRIS LOST.  In fact in that thread Morris commented HIMSELF if I remember correctly talking about the OTHER Democrats he would be helping in November (implying he wouldn't be helping Rex).  EVEN THIS WEEKEND HE IS HAVING A "JOINT FUNDRAISER" AT HIS HOUSE THAT INCLUDES A BUNCH OF CANDIDATES BUT NOT REX.

The real problem here is NOT Tim Hugo.  They are the Democrats irresponsibly giving this ammo to Tim after a primary they had no business running in to begin with.  MORRIS AND NATE- TAKE SOME RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS.

"How could [Hugo] NOT use [the] comments...?"  Most of the criticism has less to do with using the comments than the deliberately misleading way the comments were used, especially the sourcing of the comments as "www.raisingkaine.com."  Hugo knew both who made the comments and the context in which they were made.  If Hugo had said "here's what a fellow Democrat with extensive knowledge of the primary race earlier this year had to say about Simmons," it would have been fair and possibly effective in terms of communicating important information to voters.  Instead, Hugo, like some gossip monger, says "look what others are saying," and, with absolutely no context, used insults like "liar" and "coward."  I suppose one could argue that someone saying somewhere that Simmons lied and displayed cowardice might have some utility to voters trying to make up their minds, but it would be a stretch.  Let's face it; Hugo's goal was to run an almost purely negative ad, the purpose of which is to discourage the electorate and depress turnout.  Sometimes it works.  In this case, the high-profile backlash not only encourages the pro-Simmons forces, it also may discourage the pro-Hugo forces.  In fact, I think your being pissed off may have less to do with the direction this story has taken and more to do with Hugo's not effectively aiding your efforts to share negative information about Nate.

In regard to Ben's post:

1.  Yes - we were in the primary.

2.  Nate de la Piedra was never hired by our campaign and worked briefly as a volunteer during the months of January and February.

3.  I ran in the primary against someone who was retired and threw in $20k of his own money.  My final result at the ballot was very close to Galligan's. 

4.  Teri and I are having a fundraiser for Chap,  Janet, George and Margi this weekend.

5.  Teri and I will be throwing a fundraiser in October for Rex,  Jay and two other Democratic House of Delegates candidates.

Ben, you are of course invited, and perhaps if you show up you can tell me about your efforts to help Dave Marsden after the 2005 Democratic Primary.

--morris

was not even working for the campaign? He was only a volunteer?

What kind of credibility does that give him that they would quote him in a political ad? Forgive me, I don't know the man, but I could get a quote from any whack-job volunteer on either side of the aisle about ANYBODY.

Grafitti is right.

And one I haven't seen is to a newspaper's editorial and op-ed pages. Here's the analogy:

If the Washington Post editorial board endorsed candidate A in an election, but two of its op-ed columnists supported candidate B and wrote columns disparaging candidate A, and then candidate B did an ad saying that the Washington Post supports candidate B and called candidate A something insulting, that would be misrepresenting the actual WaPo editorial position. It would be a distortion not to state clearly that the source of the quotes was the columnist or op ed writer rather than the paper's editorial writer. 

It would be misleading.  All mainstream newspapers have op ed writers with differing opinions in order to provide a lively discussion in their paper.  And Raising Kaine could be compared to a newspaper in some ways in that it encourages debate in the progressive community. 

The proper way for Hugo to have used la Piedra's quotes would have been to source them in this way:

"Pitin, a Raising Kaine diarist said on (the date of the diary)that (whatever was quoted about Simmons)."

That would have been proper attribution and it would have been an honest ad, even if the rest of the Raising Kaine community was upset at la Piedra for giving ammunition to Hugo.

The issue is sourcing properly and attributing accurately.  And I believe Hugo, who admits he knew the source, deliberately tried to mislead viewers into believing it was Raising Kaine's position rather than the words of one diarist.

Here's a photograph of Tim Hugo thinking up his attack ad: http://wwwthepartyof...

I heard Tim Hugo is a pedophile.

It has now been picked up by Talking Points Memo

http://talkingpoints...

I expect it will be picked up by one of the local TV stations in the next day or so.

PS -- This story is about Hugo's dishonesty, not about Nate.

PPS -- I think Morris and Teri should be given a big round of applause for holding a fundraiser for Rex (and others).  They are truly a "class act."

This is shocking.  If this is acceptable political behavior, then what would stop a candidate from quoting some anonymous commenter on my blog and attributing what he or she wrote to me... even if this commenter wrote exactly the opposite of what I had written?  Here are my two cents.

by Raising Kaine against Mr. Hugo? It's like smearing one's good name. Any RK legal eagles care to address this question with an expert opinion here on RK? For Free?Remember, I got threatened once with legal action for something Raising Kaine printed (and not written by me, either).

The Post gets comments from Sean O'Brien (campaign staffer for a Democratic campaign before suddenly becoming "non-partisan"), Karen S. Johnson-Cartee,a political science professor (Oh, and the post seems to leave out how she's an active Democratic political consultant to many Democratic campaigns), and Gary Nordlinger, another Democratic consultant.

So, the Post quotes three Democratic campaign workers, and Lowell sees that as "everyone?"  Could the Post's quotees have more of a leftward tilt?

unethical behavior?  That certainly would be par for the course.

Lowell, you and I and all thinking readers know that if there ever was a liberal bias in the corporate-owned media, like the Post, those days are long gone.  When Republicans get caught red-handed acting sleazy, they always portray themselves as the victims.  For example, Hugo claimed he had to retaliate for Simmons' mentioning Hugo's vote for the abusive driver fees.  I only hope that the shrillness of Republican whining is directly related to how poorly they think they'll fare in November.

I mean, Simmons attacking Hugo for voting for the abusive driver fees is fair game--he's criticizing his voting RECORD, after all--that's what campaigns are SUPPOSED to do. Not make innuendoes about supposed mixed-race love children, or supposed bi-sexuality, or any of that other crap--but attack his PUBLIC RECORD.

Unless Hugo didn't vote for the dammed thing?

Nor have I seen these ads on cable tv-cause I don't got cable, so this might be ill-informed, but as I read the article, sounded like a case of let's get Napster because they're using technology that are in turn pirating songs of artists who aren't getting profits, because they're not going into Tower records.  Markos was in this weeks edition of Book World.  Lowell's site,Raising Kaine, is being quoted in today's WP.  I mean we were derided as loony leftists radicals, until we played a pivital role in Democrats getting majorities in both chambers of Congress, seems to me, this is a tint of the perks we acquired when we became famous. So, like the article said-a classic case of old world vote getting, with new world vote getting.

if Lowell Feld made all these comments that are featured in Hugo's ad, but he's not being quoted, then yes that is a low blow by Hugo's part.  Lowell is one of the few that is a big head.  He came to fame via the Webb campaign.The public knows this, its been reported as such.  If on the other it is me presidentialman-or anyone else that hides behind a screen name, I think that's more decorum not to use presidentialman on Hugo's part,because we can't assume presidentialman is a paid staffer. So, that's a possible angle to look at too. 

I think there are some Virginia voters who may have passing familiarity with blogs -- maybe even RaisingKaine.  Although, the thing that gets me with this one is that it doesn't seem like any blogs are established to a point where credibility quotes will get any mileage--either positive or negative. 

Among Democratic activists, and perhaps among some GOP activists within the state and political reporters, yes, people will recognize the attribution source.  But will it change an activists' opinion?  Of course not.

How about as far less engaged, or technical unsavvy state election voters?  I don't see any value here to the citation.  It may even come across as a net negative, because the source is unknown, and it might seem like Hugo just made the quotes up himself. 

On the flip side, as I stated in an earlier post on this issue, if the ad drives web traffic to this site how is that going to help Hugo?  If a voter is undecided, I think it would be a net negative (because the discussion on this site demonstrates ways in which Hugo was playing fast and loose with the truth -- it shows that he was fudging the truth at best). 

If a voter leans strongly towards one party it will have no impact whatsoever. 

The only real value in the ad relates to the illegal immigration issue.  Putting attention on this issue may distract voters from Hugo's abuser fee vote -- although I suspect this too will play mostly along party lines.  If I was Hugo I would have solely played on this issue and left out the RaisingKaine quotation, which doesn't seem to serve his purposes at all.

All this is to say that the ad strikes me as a pretty poor use of $150,000 in campaign money (a significant expenditure in a local election).  GOTV will make decide this particular race, and those dollars could have been used to better effect for that purpose.  I'll be curious to see how this one actually plays out in November.  Hugo's also given me a good reason to donate some volunteer hours to Simmons.