Corrections! Help me Readers – I Am Truly Undecided for Governor and LG.

I am seeking the advice of my readers (all 30,000,000 of you!) as to the VA Governor’s race and the LG.  I am truly undecided.

This story about the altered FB headline is exactly my point summed up in a nutshell:

Now a group aligned with Virginia gubernatorial hopeful Corey Stewart, a firebrand conservative supportive of Trump, has weaponized a fake headline to attack rival Ed Gillespie, the GOP establishment’s pick for governor. At issue: Gillespie’s level of support for Virginia’s Confederate monuments.

Here’s what they did:

A conservative nonprofit with ties to Stewart campaign aides — the Conservative Response Team — subsequently posted and promoted a Facebook post linking to the article but with a fake headline: “Gillespie: I’m OK with Charlottesville Taking Down the General Lee Monument.”

***

Rick Shaftan is a Republican political operative who runs the Conservative Response Team’s Facebook page and altered the headline. He said Gillespie is trying to have it both ways and that the changed headline reflects that.

“It’s all true, it’s exactly what Ed thinks,” Shaftan said.

And here’s Gillespie’s response:

The Gillespie campaign complained to Facebook in mid-February, saying the altered headline misrepresented Gillespie’s position. Facebook didn’t remove the post then. It responded by suggesting, among other things, that the Gillespie campaign create a new page focused on debunking false stories.

However, when asked about the post Friday by an Associated Press reporter, Facebook removed it that day. Spokesman Andy Stone said it violated Facebook’s terms of not doing “anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.”

So we have supporters of one candidate making up headlines and the other candidate playing a political correct game – asking FB to shut down free speech.  It’s enough for me to root for Senator Wagner (and yes I remember slating and he has a tendency toward big government conservatism) or vote for the Libertarian.  (Jason Carrier is seeking signatures for the LP nod and here is an informative but slanted post at BlueVirginia.)  BUT that could mean one of the Democrats wins again!

Turning to the LG’s race – it’s pretty bad when you like one of the candidates because he went to Estonia for ideas (here is the John Fredericks interview and here is a news story on Davis including the Estonia trip) and I am crazy about the Baltic republics.  But Davis is supposed to be the most liberal in the race although the other two hopefuls seem to have hurt themselves with the who hacked whom dustup.  I also admired Davis’ (and Stewart’s) moxie in encouraging campaign workers to camp out for the elusive first ballot spot in the June primary.  I read the code section and I lean toward the Gillespie interpretation but a suit would bring needed clarity.

If I had to vote in the primary today – I’d probably vote for Wagner and Davis.

So friendly readers:  Ideas?  (The campaigns are allowed to reach out to me too!)

TWO IMPORTANT CORRECTIONS:  It was Senator Bryce Reeves’s people that camped out with Stewart’s people too.  Thanks to Duane Adams for the correction and I now understand (thanks Andy Bakker) that Carrier is not running for Governor as an LP.  I think Carrier would have brought some biting but largely accurate commentary to the race.  I still think the LPs best chance for a statewide victory is for the LG candidate to get 10%.

Article written by: Elwood “Sandy” Sanders