Interestingly enough, Bearing Drift had most of the information the Washington Post picked up on in August — at least the allegations.
The editors chose not to run with it.
There are a few reason why, and quite frankly I would prefer not to go into tremendous detail for fear of further running down the reputation(s) of those involved. In a post-Clinton era, and in an era of social media where narratives can be manufactured (and folks pay heavily to do precisely this) — I have really ceased to care about such rumors and innuendo.
Of course, the reason why folks dive in to such nonsense is for one simple reason — people are horrible, and love to drag folks down to the vulgarities of the commons.
Case in point? Thought the article quotes the shock of Reeves and the doubling down from Delegate Nick Freitas, such commonalities are par for the course among their staff as they compare the opinions of others to menstrual cycles. Caveat lector.
This race started getting ugly in August 2016 when Jill Vogel’s two-step on transgender bathrooms became an issue. The Virginian-Pilot (oddly enough) chose to lash out at Reeves on trips to Qatar on the taxpayer dime in an utterly convenient bit of timing.
Let’s dive a bit deeper on this. Vogel herself was the target of a series of attacks from a Washington D.C. based e-mail account named Virginia Values:
From: Virginia Values<>
Date: Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 6:17 PM
Subject: Jill Vogel caved to pro abortion voices
To: REDACTEDOn twitter Jill Vogel is saying that she “supports tougher standards on abortion clinics”-but in the State Senate she backed down once she received pressure from Planned Parenthood, lawyers, and clinics.
Vogel said she backed down on tougher restrictions to abortion clinics as a “matter of conscience.”
Here is a clip of LIBERAL RACHEL MADDOW celebrating Vogel’s flip-flop. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/virginia-senate-strikes-transvaginal-ult
We need solid conservatives who are strong enough to stand up for family values-not RINOS like Vogel who back down under pressure.
But of course, none of this happened in a vacuum. This was actually a tit-for-tat of random anonymous e-mails going back and forth between the two camps.
To wit?
Here is Stafford Values out there slamming “Crooked Bryce” for… well… everything in June 2016 (just after Virginia Values slammed Vogel in August 2016):
———- Forwarded message ———
From: Stafford Alert <>
Date: Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 6:37 PM
Subject: Crooked Senator Bryce Reeves!
To: REDACTEDIf you thought Crooked Hillary was bad, meet the most crooked candidate ever: Senator Bryce Reeves.
Masking as a conservative, he is the LEAST responsible person with the people’s trust perhaps to ever serve in the Senate. He is not concerned with real people and always with a hand out looking for a free ride.
He recently came to Stafford asking for our support for Lieutenant Governor. That did not go over well.
He displays all of the swagger and arrogance and none of the commitment to people here who need help. We need an honest person to run to for his seat in the next Senate election and we certainly need a true conservative in the LG race and it is not him. Go support a TRUE conservative, who is ethical and knows how to govern.
Ask people who live in Bryce Reeves’s district who know the real Bryce. They watched him get elected and never come back again.
His first act was to gerrymander his district so he could do the least amount of work possible. He pulled a fast trick and tried to slip through a bill JUST for himself and he got busted.
He is a fake conservative, who campaigns for liberals and votes like one. Rather than support a person with real conservative values for President, he chose to travel around the state campaigning for Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio? He was heard bashing Cruz and other conservatives and we didn’t appreciate that.
He is a total RINO endorsed by only RINO Senators in the LG race (Tommy Norment, Emmet Hanger, Ryan McDougle). He thinks conservatives are stupid clearly.
Crooked Bryce has taken thousands of dollars from his campaigns and from his colleagues, the crooked play to get rich in office. We have watched it happen and the tragedy is that it has cost other Republican campaigns dearly. He raised money from donors telling them that it would go to support other Republicans and then he KEPT the money for himself to fund his growing lifestyle. While Republicans were being outspent and losing in tight elections, this Senator kept money earmarked for them. We in Stafford heard about that during the election and were appalled.
Never mind the money, what about TRUTH? People who know him know he also doesn’t tell the truth and seems to have no shame about it. Recently he filed a campaign report that showed his LG race raised $33,000. But he sent an email to supporters saying he raised over a hundred thousand dollars. Don’t believe me? Look it up. It takes a lot of nerve to raise 33k and tell people you raised five times more by moving money from one campaign account to another, UNLESS YOU ARE BRYCE REEVES. Yep, that is the man we know. He thinks the people he represents are stupid but he is dishonest and eventually it catches up. It will continue to catch up.
Pay attention and see what real fiscal conservative does by the way. Endless gifts to himself from money that was supposed to be raised to spend on a campaign. Expensive dinners, travel, shopping, money for himself. He has his campaign donors paying for his personal car inspection and a car. How do people struggling to survive who give him money feel about that?? Given what Republicans went through in Virginia in the biggest scandal of money taking in history, that kind of stealing out of a campaign is unbelievable.
None of that is the worst for Stafford. The worst for residents and businesses in this community is that he introduced a bill and had the nerve to tell us in Stafford that it was intended to get even with us.
Just in case you have any doubt, we have let our fellow Republicans know he will not win an election here ever again. We want someone who sticks up for real people. Who actually reads legislation, has conservative values, cares enough to fight for the community and who isn’t crooked. Who would ever stand up and tell a county he was trying to hurt them and their businesses and their families out of personal spite?
Crooked RINOS should never win reelection to the Senate and so should not come calling. Much less higher office. And this is just the beginning of what people in Stafford know about this crooked RINO.
Naturally — and this has to be said — but standing apart from this childishness is one Delegate Glenn Davis… his candidacy has been a steady stream of self-made social media tidbits (amateurish but endearingly genuine). Davis above all else has to be admiring the fistfight from a distance.
More to the point, why the hell are we being asked to care? If folks are short on ideas, here are a few recommendations:
- Workforce Development
- Microfinance
- Building out the Port of Virginia
- Building another four-year college or university in Virginia
- Reforming K-12 education in Virginia by fixing the Local Composite Index (LCI)
- Placing a moratorium on unfunded mandates to localities
- Finding opportunities for local governments to co-operate regionally
- …rather than have a “fourth layer of government” imposed upon localities
- Higher pay for Virginia’s state troopers
- Matching teacher salary increases with charter schools and ending tenure
- Abolishing BPOL
- Getting rid of property taxes and exchange it for a flat 1% income tax
- Creating a new “manufacturing 2.0” base in Southwest and Southside Virginia
- Creating a free market alternative to Medicaid expansion (HSAs + HDIPs)
…or the most important duty of the Lieutenant Governor:
- How frequently do you intend to check on the health of the Governor?
All of this struggle for a $30,000/year part time job… and yet the Lt. Governor has a unique ability to set the tone and be the “bully pulpit” for the Republican Party and the conservative movement in a way that few offices can do likewise.
Bill Bolling was an amazing example of this, and if we ever arrived at the grand idea of finding a Lt. Governor willing to take on the duties of RPV Chairman and sit there for the next 20 years? We could take the Attorney General and leapfrog them to the governor’s mansion every four years… and build a real engine for conservative ideas.
…but ideas. Not anonymous e-mails slandering the reputations and character of others.
UPDATE: Sara Allison has chimed in with some thoughts over at Millennial Ascent:
The disturbing appearance that it is the campaign, or someone closely connected to the campaign, of the only female candidate for Lt. Governor that is making these allegations. And while Senator Vogel has denied having anything to do with these accusations and has made no comment as to whom the alleged woman is, well known supporters of her campaign, some female, have taken the accusation and run with it, going as far as to make troubling statements alluding to who the staffer could be with no consideration for her reputation, career, or future. Unfortunately, there are still some in politics who see the reputations and future careers of young women as an acceptable sacrifice when attempting to tarnish the record or reputation of an opponent. Even more unfortunate is that some of those people are women who claim to support other women.
Take this as you will… but it would appear as if the offending e-mails have a target in mind… more specifically, whomever Reeves was alleged to have had a romantic encounter with in the Fredericksburg RNC Victory office.
UPDATE x2: Now this I find extremely odd, from over at The Bull Elephant:
“Martha McDaniels” appears now to be a pseudonym for someone operating from the home of Sen. Vogel, or wishing observers to think they were operating from the Vogels’ home.
The article did not do much other than regurgitate what we already know. Yet one small problem continues to percolate here. If indeed all evidence points towards this originating from Alex Vogel’s cell phone (the husband of Jill Vogel), then why are we not in court right now? Why are we reading this in the pages of the Washington Post?
More accurately, if this information really is as defamatory and untrue as Reeves clearly believes it to be, why did the campaign take an e-mail limited to many of his closest friends and publish it in the Washington Post with a circulation of 2.3 million people?
This suggests two things:
- Reeves did not have enough information to hammer this one through the courts.
- Even if the location is accurate, concerns about “war driving” are open and abundant.
For those unfamiliar with what war driving is, it is effectively running around looking for either open and unsecured WiFi connections, or easily cracked connections (i.e. unsecured WiFi, Bluetooth, etc).
It is also a ridiculously simple thing to do… and if there was an environment where random and anonymous e-mails from both camps was going back and forth, is it impossible to consider that some shenanigans are going on here?
Let’s bear this in mind as well: two camps, both invested in a version of facts that approximates “truth” to their own respective teams. Does anyone really believe that anyone is really invested into getting to the bottom of what really happened? Or merely constructing a narrative that either (a) embarrasses the other person or (b) hangs a lantern on a problem?
Of course, this is possibly the most wasted 30 minutes of my life thinking all of these things through. Best way to stomp it out? If it comes from an anonymous source, just discard it immediately… for the rest of our sakes.
UPDATE x3: Bearing Drift’s Brian Schoeneman throws in with a sigh and lament:
I’m not taking sides in this fight because it’s not my role, and, frankly, I understand the anger on both sides. Anonymous attacks are frustrating because it’s almost impossible to decide what the best play is to counter them. You can respond, but that can backfire by giving more credence to the attacks (“why did he respond if it’s not true?”) than if you ignore them. But if you ignore them, you open yourself up to more criticism (“if he didn’t do it, why didn’t he say he didn’t do it?”) and more rumors. Plus, one thing you can be sure of is that if you telegraph that something bothers you, the folks who did it will keep doing it – or somebody else will start. There’s no easy way out.
Read it all.
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