Whether you support Barack Obama or John McCain, we all want our candidate to win. People are engaged in the process this year and have been doing their part to bring attention to their candidate. Largely, this has been a positive thing, but a recent act by a McCain volunteer in Pennsylvania has me wondering how far is too far to go in support of your candidate?
Yesterday, Ashely Todd, a volunteer for McCain’s campaign, complained to Pittsburgh police that she was attacked at an ATM in the city. She came from Texas to help work on McCain’s campaign in the city of Pittsburgh. According to her claim, a man robbed her and when he saw her McCain bumper sticker, carved a backwards “B” into her cheek.
Fox News, The Pittsburg Post Gazette, News Day, Rush Limbaugh and other media outlets jumped on the bandwagon of this story yesterday. McCain and Palin both called the candidate and expressed their concern for the girl. The Obama campaign came out in support of her as well and expressed concern and regret for her injuries.
Well, it turns out, the whole thing was a hoax. The woman was never attacked. The police in Pittsburgh became suspicious when her story changed. Apparently, she added details and said she blacked out after previously saying she was awake during the attack. This prompted the police to request that she take a lie detector test. She took it, and failed. Later, she admitted it was a hoax.
Today McCain is distancing himself from this story. They were careful to make the point today that this woman is not a paid campaign worker, but a volunteer. Regardless of whether she was paid or not, I seriously doubt the candidate is responsible or would endorse such a reckless act by anyone involved with his campaign.
When I saw this story yesterday, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I was concerned that the divisive nature of the campaign had led us down a really ugly road. On the other hand, I was suspicious. For me, the backwards B seemed odd and not quite right. Well, considering she was looking in the mirror when she did it answers that question!
This story is not playing well in Pennsylvania. Comments on the internet are expressing outrage at an outsider coming into our state and making up a story, casting a cloud on our cities. She may have done her cause more harm than good. Since the prevailing wisdom is that McCain’s only hope would be to win every single one of the remaining toss up states and turn PA into the red column on the electoral map, this isn’t a good thing for him.