Gerry Connolly has a fight on his hands. Expecting an easy coast to victory in November, Connolly has done little to actually campaign for reelection in Virginia’s 11th Congressional District. Suzanne Scholte has been quietly running a very efficient campaign of voter outreach and targeted messaging that’s boosting her name ID and resonating on the issues – closing the gap and capitalizing on the same strengths highlighted in her internal numbers.
Clearly she’s doing something right, because last week Connolly began a barrage of mailers and ad buys totaling more than half a million dollars trying to paint Suzanne Scholte, a woman, mind you, as bad on women’s rights issues:
The problem with Connolly’s attacks are numerous.
First off, they completely ignore Suzanne’s background. Sholte has been a champion for human rights for years, serving as Chairman and Founding Member of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, President of the Defense Forum Foundation, Vice Chairman and Founding Board Member of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Founding Member and Chairman of the US-Western Sahara Foundation and so much more.
Just this year, Scholte received the gold President’s Volunteer Service Award, awarded by President Barack Obama, for her sustained commitment to civic participation and inspiring others to make service a part of their lives. She received the Sanders Peace and Social Justice award for her work in the areas of peace and social justice. She received the highest honor available for non-Koreans by the South Korean government in 2013 and in 2008 received the Seoul Peace Prize, an honor shared with Ban Ki Moon, George Schulz, Oxfam and Doctors without Borders.
In short, Suzanne Scholte has been fighting for human rights – and women’s rights – around the world for nearly thirty years.
But Gerry Connolly wants to focus on abortion? Of course he does.
He’d rather voters in the 11th District ignore his own background, especially when it comes to women’s right overseas.
In fact, Gerry Connolly was proud to be the only member of the Foreign Affairs Committee to speak out in defense of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. PROUD.
Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood was enforcing what was, frankly, a downright stone age view of women rights:
“A woman needs to be confined within a framework that is controlled by the man of the house,” Osama Yehia Abu Salama, a Brotherhood family expert, said of the group’s general approach, speaking in a recent seminar for women training to become marriage counselors. Even if a wife were beaten by her husband, he advised, “Show her how she had a role in what happened to her.”
“If he is to blame,” Mr. Abu Salama added, “she shares 30 percent or 40 percent of the fault.”
According to the Muslim Brotherhood, a woman should not have the right to file legal complaints against husbands for rape, husbands should not be subject to punishment for raping strangers, husbands should have “guardianship” over their wife and be superior to her, daughters do not have the same rights as sons, and husband’s must consent for women to travel, work, or use contraceptives.
But Connolly is proud of his 100% rating from Planned Parenthood.
And happy to have Muslim Brotherhood activists host fundraisers for his campaign.
Oh, and Coptic Christians? In Gerry Connolly’s world, they’re on their own.
Women in Palestine? Gerry Connolly supports funding the regime that has seen nearly 51% of women face violence from their husbands as of 2011, 65% who preferred to just keep silent.
“Women are covering themselves more, not necessarily because Hamas tells them to, but because they are afraid,” she says. “It goes back to the intifada in 1987. If a woman didn’t cover up, she would be criticised or have stones thrown at her. It is not like that now but life still feels precarious.”
This is the worldview Gerry Connolly is proud to actively support. This is the worldview that Suzanne Scholte has been fighting against for decades.
But Gerry Connolly is going to spend more than half a million dollars to try and convince 11th District voters that he is a champion of women’s rights.
But only some women. And only some rights.
Connolly has fallen back on the old “war on women” attack because he thinks a broad brush will work in the district. But his record on foreign policy, support of sequestration, his taking his district and constituents for granted, and a potential wave may set up quite the surprise November 4th. Suzanne Scholte is a different kind of candidate, and one that resonates in the district. It’s a sprint to the finish and Connolly is the one starting behind.
