Wasinger’s 10th District campaign plumbs new depths in their race for the gutter, revealing the candidate to be desperate, fake, and amateur.
Rob Wasinger really doesn’t know much about Virginia politics, it seems. He doesn’t understand that he’s not playing in the triple-A Prairie League anymore…this is the Big Show. In contrast to some “Heartland” provinces (whence Wasinger’s press secretary says his values come), the intensive process here chews up amateurs and spits them out fast enough to make their heads spin.
Late Wednesday and yesterday, the Virginia blogosphere (The Bull Elephant, Shaun Kenney at Bearing Drift, and Thor’s Hammer at Virtucon) revealed the silly sock puppetry of the Wasinger campaign, where both of his supporters/staffers assumed a variety of false identities to spread lies and distortions masquerading as serious opposition research. Wasinger’s folks don’t understand online technology, and that bloggers can see the underlying data about who is posting to know when they’re posting under aliases. Then, we reported how Wasinger’s people don’t understand offline technology, as they left a trail of crumbs on the supposedly objective opposition research that led right back to the office of Michigan Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, where, until Tuesday, Wasinger served as Chief of Staff.
Today, our mother blog, Virginia Virtucon, reveals an even sloppier (who knew that was possible?) attempt at deceiving Virginia voters via an astroturf online presence. From Thor’s Hammer:
That was what you might call a rough day.
But Wasinger and company clearly didn’t have enough.
Today emails are arriving in inboxes questioning Barbara Comstock’s pro-life credentials (which is laughable). The emails are generated from virginiansforlife.com – a domain that has no website and was not registered until February 3rd, 2014 and clearly meant to confuse voters into thinking it’s from longstanding Virginians For Life (http://www.virginiansforlife.org/)
Who could be behind such a website?
Let’s look at the underlying whois data, shall we?
Domain Name: VIRGINIANSFORLIFE.COM
Registry Domain ID: 1845226193_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.domain.com
Registrar URL: http://www.domain.com
Updated Date: 2014-02-03 10:33:34
Creation Date: 2014-02-03T10:31:16Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2015-02-03 15:31:16
Registrar: Domain.com, LLC
Registrant Name: Richard PIwko
Registrant Organization: Richard PIwko
Registrant Street: [REDACTED]
Registrant City: Canton
Registrant State/Province: MI
Registrant Postal Code: 48187
Registrant Country: USNow, you may be asking yourself, who is Richard Piwko?
Richard Piwko is a part-time staffer for none other than, tah-dah – Rep. Kerry Bentivolio!
SMACK!
Seriously, who do these people think they are? (And why does Kerry Bentivolio hire such a Keystone Kops staff?) How can a person who claims to be conservative, and claims to want to represent Virginia’s 10th District, undertake such deceptive and immoral tactics? Voters in the 10th District need to run this clown out of town on a rail.
Perhaps he can go back to working for some pro-abortion candidate, like he did when he was pushing Jon Huntsman to be our presidential nominee (where his job was to convince conservatives not to be concerned about Huntsman’s liberal stances on social issues). In any case, Wasinger and his tactics have no place in the Virginia GOP.
13 comments
HEADLINE: Comstock takes 60k from the homosexual lobby and promotes chemical abortion with Kathleen Sebelius / Steve Albertson and friends accuse Wasinger of using deceptive multiple personalities.
Oooooo. Go Steve go!
Provable lie, and deleted as such.
It is very unethical for Wasinger to use Kerry Bentivolio’s staff for his personal use on the Taxpayer’s dime. Does Rep Bentivolio even know this? If so, was Wasinger’s resignation really voluntary or was he given a graceful chance to exit? This whole charade has really cheapened this race for all the others in it. I applaud those who took the time to dig into and root out this guy’s deception.
As I reflect on this, I really think Wasinger’s press secretary is himself. Any serious candidate would have fired a member of his or her staff as soon as such deception was brought to his or her attention (I imagine many emailed or called Wasinger to inform him). The events of the past few days have clearly demonstrated Mr. Wasinger is a very disturbed and unethical human being. He is the LAST person we should consider for Congress. I question the judgement of any person working on the Hill that would employ such a person if that individual knew this man’s background.
amen!
It’s pretty deceptive to say that Bentivolio’s staff is helping their former colleague “on the taxpayer’s dime.” The article from this own blog shows that it was done on a Sunday. Support Comstock all you want, but at least be honest.
Agreed. There is no evidence that they worked on the taxpayer dime. But, there is an appearance of impropriety that should be addressed.
Steve, those staffers were under his supervision and are dedicated resources to Rep Bentivolio. Most Congressional representatives usually require their staffers get approval before working on other campaigns. When I ran for office last year, I had a number of friends on the Hill that had to get approval from their chief of staff in order to help out on my campaign. Rob may have given that approval before he stepped down during the time period this was put together, but I would suspect he would have had to run it by Rep Bentivolio before hand. If she truly knew the tactics he has used, I seriously doubt she would have given the OK. In any event, something seems strange here. As you mentioned, there is an appearance of impropriety and given the tactics he has employed, Wasinger’s ethics are in question. In my mind, that puts everything on the table for examination.
I guess that’s where we disagree. It doesn’t seem to appear improper. The virginians for life guy is listed as working for Bentivolio in Q3 2013. Does he even still work there? Have you looked to see if anyone on Comstock’s team is in Wolfe’s office?
It takes time to put this stuff together, create phony websites, etc. Multiple people from her staff have been involved and the amount of time spent on this in all liklihood exceeded personal free time available. You may call it “deceptive,” but I call it a supposition based upon a reasonable assumption. That is no more deceptive than your assumption that I support Comstock.
Speaking of honesty, why would anyone support a candidate that recurs to these deceptive antics, and the use of several aliases to engage in “sock puppetry” in order to smear an opponent? Let’s not lose track of the issue at stake here. And having checked the candidate’s website, it is quite amateurish and lacking of real substance and content. And why is he critizing the party that he purports to represent? He shouldn’t run to represent the GOP, and in the same breath criticize the party. It looks to me as if he is a disgruntled libertarian, perhaps, that wants to upset the applecart. One thing is for sure: he’s not fooling any of us!
HappyDays1900 are you Wasinger?
Lol. No. I moved to Virginia recently, trying to figure out what’s going on in this race after the Daily Caller drew my attention to the race. This seemed like the place to be, but I’m still not sold on the evidence. The Q3 2013 stood out to me.
[…] UPDATE: Steve Albertson at The Bull Elephant piles on: […]