| There's a certain type of Republican who can be counted on to accuse his opponent of whatever he is guilty of himself. It's an "offense is the best defense" sort of misdirection that the Bush crowd has turned into a fine art. It works as long as the media just parrots their talking points, but get a reporter checking facts and the story falls apart. That's exactly what happened to AL-05 Republican nominee Wayne Parker Wednesday. Wasting no time after wrapping up his parties nomination, he attacked Dr. Parker Griffith by accusing him of having too many out of state contributors. He got specific, saying "49% of his contributors are from out of state." Fortunately, WHNT's Amber Stuart decided to do a little research, talking to Griffith and actually checking the contributors listed in each candidates campaign finance reports before filing her story. What does Parker Griffith have to say about this? "I had 579 individual contributors, I had 85 PAC contributors, but of the 579 individuals who contributed to me I think 35 were from out of state. So it's untrue what he's saying. But it's a classic pattern of Wayne Parker who has contributed absolutely nothing to this community. And has nothing to talk about what he wants to do is distract the voters," said Parker Griffith. We wanted to know which, if either, candidate is correct. So, we checked. We went to the Federal Election Commission's web site to see the information firsthand. Following the money, we tracked money coming into both campaigns from out of state sources. Amber: You have out of state donors too. Parker: Yea, yea, yea. Amber: From Singapore, Texas, Florida, and Virginia several out of state donors as a matter of fact a few more than Parker Griffith. It's kind of hard for you to make that statement.
I scanned the contributor lists, too and Ms. Stuart is right. Griffith has too many donors for me to tally them up tonight, but I only found about 30 from outside Alabama -- nowhere near 49%, and probably less than 10%, so Parker's initial claim was just plain false. Wayne Parker didn't bother to actually look at the factual information before he made a false accusation. It's a darn good thing reporters like Amber Stuart at WHNT are around to call BS on lies like this. If they get caught often enough, maybe they'll quit making stuff up. |
