Ellmore Drops Race
On February 11th, Mark Ellmore sent an email to supporters stating he “will end weeks of speculation and announce his candidacy for Virginia’s 8th District congressional seat”. Less than 3 weeks later, the rumor mill is buzzing that he has dropped out of the race. His website has gone blank and the ArlingtonGOP site states he has withdrawn. Last week when I saw him at the ACRC meeting, he kept trying to explain the 10th Amendment to me, to which I could only respond, “I’m glad you’re finally reading the Constitution.”
Normally I don’t blog about campaigns but Ellmore and myself have a feisty and unpleasant past. We spent the entire election day back in June 2008 yelling at each other due to an intentionally false mailer sent by his campaign in the 11th hour to discredit thousands of volunteer hours and dollars spent to win the election by 700 votes. Perhaps even more telling of his character was his ability to blame his 16 year old campaign manager for mailer sent.
In the end, Ellmore turned out to be his own worst enemy. He never did himself any favors with the description he wrote himself for his motivational book. I suspect that in addition to his perpetual fundraising woes, how he ran his 2008 general campaign upset many party insiders who had endorsed him and they were not willing to associate their names with him again.
Given there are several other candidates to pick from this cycle, I will give my breakdown of the 8th district in a separate posting soon.
Category: Campaigns and Elections, Government
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Sour grapes much? Why was it necessary to rehash your spin on the 2008 primary? You lost. Sure the primary was nasty but your own supporters do not exactly have a clean slate when it comes to false attacks, such as one of your main GMU supporters consistently vandalizing Mark’s wikipedia article and filling it with false claims about Mark and his campaign manager. Your story on blaming the campaign manager has also gotten old. I normally love the stuff you write for BD, but seriously, can we focus on 2010 and beating Jim Moran rather than bringing up an election from 2 years ago?
Who are you? Can’t you show us your name? Especially, when bringing personal experiences into your posts…
@Dan, its truly not sour grapes. I will be the first to tell you that I was the weakest link in my campaign and I entered the race thinking I was going to lose 90 to 10. I ran a campaign on issues and as any candidate (especially first time) will tell you, you get volunteers that are sometimes difficult to manage but I always took the blame for anything they did or said, (we can talk about my apologies to dozens about flyers stuck to people’s windshields some other day).
what upset me about Ellmore was his willingness to flat out lie about me. forget that he never apologized, that doesn’t really matter to me. but when you have very close friends and family donating thousands of their hard earned money into your personal campaign and 40+ volunteers putting in thousands of hours of free labor because of cause only to be wasted because some guy who can’t debate the issues has to put out serious lies in a mailer in the last week that can’t be responded to is not only wrong but something we should all want excluded from politics. perhaps you will say this is politics as usual, but for me it is not.
to your last point, yes we should focus on 2010 now. I have actually been reaching out to each of the candidates personally so I can give a full review at the race. hopefully soon.
@Ben, my name is Amit Singh. most of the links in the post have my name in it so I wasn’t trying to hide it. I wouldn’t try googling my name though since my name isn’t really that unique
Excuse me Dan, everything I put on the Wikipedia page was true. Unflattering but the truth none the less. I take great offense that you said I vandalized and gave falsehoods. I actually made sure everything as footnoted. You, Mr. Tillson, are the one that vandalized the Wikipedia page by removing all the information I added.
And by the way…I’m so happy!!! Our Congressional nightmare is over!!!
Amit – I hope you didn’t think that I was insinuating that you were “hiding” your name or anything. I just read the post and was a little confused. By the time I clicked one of the links, my comment had been posted. Thanks!
Well, at least, I can save the old screen caps from his 2006 website, where he mentioned being in favor of expanding the size of government for a rainy day.
Back from the archives by popular demand!
I have nothing personal against Mr. Ellmore. However, when you mention further expanding the size of the federal government to take more liberties, this completely changes whether or not I support a candidate.
To GMUPats,
I am not the “Dan” that posted before. My only statement on the Ellmore 2010 campaign can be found on my facebook page.
-DCT
Daniel, since we don’t happen to be FB friends (and I can’t access it from work anyway), care to share what your statement said?
Make no mistake about it. Mark Ellmore is a dishonest man who lied in his campaign and served as a poor example for his faith, his politics, and his party.
Individuals must be held accountable for their actions.
I did a google with ” amit singh mark ellmore ”
Very interesting. Just a “honest Abe” republican ??
When you decide to try again Amit, I will give up some of my Tex-Mex lunches to help you.
thanks James! unless I become some sort of millionaire I don’t see myself run for office again. I simply don’t think I’m candidate material because I hate fundraising so much
Wow, is this the best you clowns can come up with. If any of you has something to say or has a comment to make you can make it to my face. Your cowardly rants on the internet are inaccurate and classless. You don’t know the truth, you don’t know the story, and you are too scared to be an adult and get off the keyboard and talk about it in person. You are the reason why the system is broken and nothing gets done in this country. Shameless wanna-be’s with a keyboard. And before you call someone out on their faith i suggest you look in the mirror.
Wow, is this the best you clowns can come up with. If any of you has something to say or has a comment to make you can make it to my face. Your cowardly rants on the internet are inaccurate and classless. You don’t know the truth, you don’t know the story, and you are too scared to be an adult and get off the keyboard and talk about it in
With no assurance that the “Mark Ellmore” above is the real Mark Ellmore, and with no additional disrespect to him if it is not:
It is clear that the actions and policies of candidates like Mark Ellmore are the reason why the system is broken and nothing gets done in this country.
“In 2008, Mark Ellmore received less than 30% of the vote, with only 29.68%. This was the lowest percentage received by a Republican Congressional Candidate in VA’s 8th district, in more than 12 years.” – “Republicans Against Mark Ellmore” Facebook Group.
“Mark Ellmore supports expanding medicare.” -Mark Ellmore’s 2008 Campaign Website
(On The $700 Billion Bailouts) “Republican challenger Mark Ellmore said that he would have reluctantly supported the bill.” – Connection Newspaper, October 2008
“He supports expanding a reformed version of SCHIP” – Mark Ellmore’s 2008 Campaign Website.
“A flier put out by Mark W. Ellmore’s campaign days before Tuesday’s U.S. House Republican primary in Northern Virginia falsely attributes material to The Washington Post, an error pointed out by his opponent and confirmed by Ellmore’s staff yesterday.” – The Washington Post, June 2008
[...] Read more from Amit at Bearing Drift [...]
@Steve, yes it was confirmed that Mark Ellmore did post the above message.
@Tillson, you mention in your FB statement that you did your best to correct the incorrect mailer. What exactly did the Ellmore campaign do? You did not issue any public statements and you did not apologize. What you did do is what you exactly intended to do: intentionally put out false information
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[...] Mark Ellmore – Dropped out in March. [...]