The billionaire co-founder of the Black Entertainment Television mocked Democrat Creigh Deeds’ occasional stuttering at a fundraiser she held for Deeds’ Republican opponent in the governor’s race, Bob McDonnell.
In a YouTube video, Sheila Johnson says Virginia needs a governor “who can really communicate, and Bob McDonnell can communicate.”
Then she tells a small crowd of wealthy donors, “The other people I talk to, especially his op-op-op-o-opponent, di-di-did this all through my interview with him.”
After muted laughter among the guests, she adds, “He could not articulate what needed to be done.”
Jared Leopold, Creigh Deeds’ press secretary, said a YouTube video depicting BET co-founder Sheila Johnson criticizing the candidate on his communication skills was a “divisive personal attack.”
“This is a cheap shot and a new low for this race,” Leopold told FOX 5 in a statement. “Virginians deserve better than personal attacks like this.
“Creigh Deeds isn’t the smoothest speaker in the race, but when he speaks he is authentic and means what he says. That’s what people will respond to, not divisive personal attacks.”
Sounds like someone’s got a case of racial Stockholm syndrome. I hope they didn’t auction her off for field work right after.
This is a post I put up somewhere else, but which I think maybe sheds a llitte light on VA – the 2008 Obama election/electorate resulted in part from a HUGE effort in the Dem jurisdictions in the north part of the state to turn out absentee voters. There are criteria which absentee voters are supposed to meet (absence from County, illness, etc.) and which have within living memory been enforced – or at least you had to lie about meeting them before the lady at the courthouse would give you a ballot. In the Obama 08 election, it was Katy bar the door, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We were all told how dreadful the lines would be election day, were nearly dragooned out of the subway to vote early. Obama’s margin for the state was I think around 150000 and that was a whole lot like the number of absentee ballots cast in the NoVa burbs. It was a huge effort with a number of folks full time running poll stations in the runup to the election, and the Reep leaning jurisdictions in south state had nothing like it, nor had they relaxed standards from what the law called for. There was nothing like that this time from FFX-ARL in facilitating votes, nor would it have worked, really, since all of us voters had no realistic fear of long lines on voting day!This is probably not replicable, and particularly now with the Reeps in charge they will make sure that there is a uniform standard for absentee voting across the state.What I’m saying is, that the 2009 change in the electorate is probably from a one-time thing to something more like the base state, here in VA. dave.s.