VA-02 Press Release Battle: Rigell Loses, Winds Up Off Message

Yesterday, almost like clockwork, Ben Loyola’s campaign team sent out an almost-sure to be ignored press release, ludicrously demanding Scott Rigell return Cash for Clunker money received at Freedom Automotive. While Loyola’s team may not understand the inner-workers of the car industry, money received was not simply cash in Rigell’s pocket, but went to pay for the massive logistical nightmare of paperwork, used car destruction, additional staff and commissions to sales people during the C4C period (speaking firsthand from my experience selling cars at Greenbrier Chrysler during that period). So the idea at the forefront is absurd, unless Ben Loyola was seeking to weaken or punish the employees working at Freedom Automotive. A stronger point would be condemning taking money and tying it into the stimulus and Obama primary donation, but I don’t work for the Loyola campaign. As I said, the press release was almost-sure to be ignored. Or so I thought…

Today Rigell’s team bafflingly responded to the press release, denouncing ‘false attacks’ and encouraging repudiation of said ‘false attacks’ by donating to the campaign. Huh?

This puzzling and bizarre response comes six weeks before the primary, where the Rigell campaign by far has stayed on message, hammering Nancy Pelosi and Glenn Nye, largely ignoring the other candidates in the race, which is Front-runner 101. To respond to Ben Loyola, a candidate who will be lucky to a) be in the race on June 8th given his precarious fiscal situation and b) if he does last six more weeks, even garner 10% of the vote is beyond head-scratching. The front-runner elevates a weaker candidate by personally responding to a off-point attack that will be read and ignored by mostly everyone? Why?!

Of course Loyola’s campaign team jumped on the chance to respond, and issued their own press release crowing over the response, and pointing out that their previous press release did not really contain false attacks. By then the damage was done, and Rigell comes out of the exchange worse off.

One person loses in this situation, and that’s Scott Rigell. After five months of on-message focus and deserved recognition for running a strong campaign as a presumed front-runner, a lame press release grabs his attention and shifts it in the complete wrong direction? This on the heels of the fiasco at RPN the other night that our commenters have been recalling for everyone. With six weeks to go, now is the worst possible time for any candidate to get off message.

There’s one debate before June 8th I’d like to see. Scott Rigell v Bert Mizusawa (i.e. the only candidate at this point left with a snowball’s chance in you know where) Any other debate/forum/Q&A/meeting holds no interest to me. But this little press release exchange plus the RPN fiasco doesn’t bode well if Scott Rigell maintains the current pace and wins the nomination. Focus is essential, exactly as Bob McDonnell laid out in all of 2009 in the strongest campaign Virginia has seen in years.

Сейчас уже никто не берёт классический кредит, приходя в отделение банка. Это уже в далёком прошлом. Одним из главных достижений прогресса является возможность получать кредиты онлайн, что очень удобно и практично, а также выгодно кредиторам, так как теперь они могут ссудить деньги даже тем, у кого рядом нет филиала их организации, но есть интернет. http://credit-n.ru/zaymyi.html - это один из сайтов, где заёмщики могут заполнить заявку на получение кредита или микрозайма онлайн. Посетите его и оцените удобство взаимодействия с банками и мфо через сеть.