Referendum Ad Wars
Look who’s doing dabbling in investigative journalism! It’s my old employer, The Virginian-Pilot.
Yep, they were so stunned by “Vote No” campaign literature aimed at black voters on the upcoming redistricting referendum, that they went digging.
Figures.
In a story headlined “Who's Behind An Anti-Redistricting Flyer Invoking Jim Crow?” the paper asked a question absolutely no one was asking. (Except Dem loyalists, that is, who don’t take kindly to black Republicans.)
Left-wingers were indignant. How dare conservatives invoke Jim Crow, only Democrats can do that, which is right since it WAS Democrats who invented Jim Crow.
The Democracy and Justice Political Action Committee paid for the campaign mailer, but campaign disclosures did not initially say who was behind the PAC — inviting speculation from Democrats that a Republican special interest group was involved. But a disclosure form provided Monday by the PAC’s attorney identifies the person behind the PAC as A.C. Cordoza, a Black former Republican state delegate.
Cordoza, who represented Hampton in the House of Delegates from 2022 to 2026, is chairman of Democracy and Justice PAC, which was registered March 5. Cordoza, who lost reelection last year, was the only Black Republican in the House of Delegates during his term.
Cardozo explained his reasoning to the paper. It’s smart and sound.
“These are the same people talking about fairness, they constructed a map that disenfranchises Black voters in favor of Northern Virginia legislators,” Cordoza said. “It’s quite shameful, they have Black districts that are now going to be watered down by people from Northern Virginia…they’re ripping apart Black districts to put in their hand-picked white representatives, and if that’s not Jim Crow, what is?”
Since the Pilot seems to want to get to the bottom of who’s behind ads, how about getting to the bottom of who devised this piece of deceptive crap that’s cropping up on billboards in Page County.
Trump ought to sue to take it down, but he’s a tad busy these days.
