Bill Wynne, a volunteer(?) for the Giuda campaign, made an interesting statement on the NHRVC Facebook page the other day. He’s talking about his favorite candidate knowing full well the NHRVC long ago endorsed Jennifer Horn.
"Hey Kevin, did you see Bob’s 4 30 sec spots I did for the campaign? I posted it to the Grok and they removed it because they do not believe in "freed of speech and expression". I have several vids ready to release about that group, but waiting for the general. They are not registered with the SOS and making endorsements. Not a good position to take. It’s too bad they are so biased. I saw that woman’s video Jennifer something on the 2nd amendment. I wouldn’t have published something of such poor quality not only in sound but video and fuzzy graphics. A real turn off for the viewer and tells what the inside of the campaign may look like putting something like that"
Emphasis mine
This is interesting for reasons you can’t even begin to imagine but first a bit of clarity. The Grok started a Facebook page not long ago and Bill was one of our first “friends.” He immediately challenged our judgment in choosing to endorse Horn (which is fine) but then proceeded to pee Giuda propaganda all over our Facebook page like a Bull Dog marking territory. He essentially took it over for Bob.
Now I like Bob, and Bill, but let’s have some perspective here. You don’t pirate someone’s fan page for your own purposes like a gay activist takes over Target. It’s just not good form. And Bill was still commenting on the page until yesterday after we confronted him about this comment. He seems to have since taken his toys and gone home.
But we still need to explore this for reasons that I hope will become apparent.
To begin–in no particular order– Bill’s claim that we are biased is accurate only in that we are as much so as he is, accepting the caveat that we didn’t digitally flash mob someone else’s Facebook page to express our opinion—we use or create one of our own.
While that’s not much of an indictment, what follows might be.
The freedom of speech remark ("they do not believe in freed of speech…") makes a rather spurious claim based on flawed logic, and is only worth mentioning becasue of its irony. (See below.) But what really caught my eye was the followup–"I have several vids ready to release about that group." Ooooh. We’re ‘That group, now. Usually only liberals talk about us like that. I am intrigued. Does it have to do with how we "do not believe in freed of speech." I’ll get the popcorn.
But why is he waiting? Is he expecting to have a lot of free time after next Tuesday? Or is this supposed to intimidate us? Is he going to release some hard hitting expose series about people who would not endorse Bob Giuda–"The untold story!!"–meant to upset our little anti-free speech blogging apple cart? And more importantly, why is the (volunteer?) videographer of a CD-2 congressional candidate waiting to release videos about Granite Grok—and… why would he announce it on NHRVC? I say bring it Bill. I probably won’t watch it, but bring it anyway.
This brings me to the main course of the Facebook comment, the “intimidating activists for political purposes portion.” Yes, that’s right–the video threat is not nearly as ominous as this next bit, a perennial favorite of the Giuda staff… "They are not registered with the SOS and making endorsements. Not a good position to take.”
This is stock verbiage from their campaign staff and has been used before, and more than once. The NHRVC—on whose Facebook page this appears, has repeatedly been “warned” by the likes of Rogers Johnson and even Susan Carroll,(both of whose names appear on the campaign expenditures report), as well as by some low level staffer a,bout endorsements and communicating campaign events on facebook. They seem particularly concerned about the Horn endorsement. Hmmmm.
Kevin McHugh the front man for the NHRVC (I am listed as their director of research/new media/public relations, assistant drinker of beers at casual get-togethers, and so on) has the emails and details, some of which he has shared with me. But neither NHRVC nor the Grok is engaging in any kind of paid political activity. It’s all personal time, volunteered, with our own computers, in our homes,or out in public spaces, where we are simply exercising our right to free speech and to peaceably assemble. Despite that Rogers Johnson spent 30 minutes on the phone with Kevin early in the year to explain his concern “activist to activist” that NHRVC could be violating FEC rules (which means federal law) without ever mentioning he was working for Giuda. We found that out later .And even after we explained the nature of the group Kevin has continued to receive emails from Giuda staff to the same effect.
Is this a public service being provided by the campaign to any collection of private citizens or is it intimidation playing on potential ignorance to get groups to pull back endorsements for political points?
I think that this staff is actively waging a subtle but premeditated war of intimidation against Republican oriented internet presences that have endorsed their opponent, and Bill’s remarks about the Grok, months after my first contact with this kind of tactic demonstrate that this is embedded in the culture of this campaign and an intentional and persistent effort to limit political speech they object to.
So that brings us back to Bill’s ironic remarks about the Grok not believing in “Freed of speech and expression.” In the context of accusing us of refusing to let him piss all over our Facebook fan page, he has attempted to intimidate the Grok into backing off our endorsement of Jen Horn. Or maybe it’s just a cheap series of smears.
Well I don’t think that’s going to work Bill. But thanks for the evidence. Now that I’ve heard it from the Campaign manager all the way down to a volunteer activist, we can assume it’s planned, pervasive, and intentional. Now it’s just a matter of determining if it has been tried on anyone else.
