Frank White is resorting to blatant dishonesty in the final days of his primary battle with Ashley Moody for the Republican nomination for Attorney General, getting slammed by the Tampa Bay Times for the “most misleading campaign ad so far this year.”
Making matters even worse, White’s misleading ad is actually telling a lie about a previous ad where he also lied.
In the earlier campaign ad, White falsely attacked Moody by calling her a “lifelong Democrat.” The truth is that she registered as a Democrat at age 18 but switched her registration to Republican in January 1998 while she was in law school — over twenty years ago.
WESH reporter Gregory Fox reviewed White’s ad in one of his “Truth Test” segments and rated it “false,” and an animated graphic showed the “Truth Test” meter swinging from “true” to “false.”
White then took that WESH segment and edited it to make it seem like Fox was saying the exact opposite of what he really said, as the Times describes:
In a new ad, the White campaign replays the WESH story, but eliminates the word “first,” so Fox is heard saying, “It is true Ashley Moody was a registered Democrat.” The White ad then eliminates the second sentence and shows the “Truth Test” meter on “true.”
The White campaign didn’t return the Times‘ calls for comment, and there are no apologies or retractions on White’s Twitter account about this dishonest ad.
Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter: @rumpfshaker.
Photo by Tristan Schmurr via Flickr.
[Fair disclosure: I’ve known Ashley Moody since we were both students at the University of Florida and proudly cast my vote for her during early voting this week. White’s conduct in this race — this is far from his first distortion of Moody’s record or position on the issues — made me even more confident in my vote. This is my personal opinion, and should not be attributed as an official position of The Capitolist or any other person associated with this site.]