Democrat Gary McCollum’s campaign has just gone from bad to dumpster fire, hasn’t it?
Let’s start with the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, where McCollum really, really doesn’t like lobbyists:
In a news release Wednesday, McCollum pledged he would not accept gifts from lobbyists.
“We need to rebuild the public’s trust in Richmond, to do that we must hold our legislators accountable,” he said in the statement. “We need leaders in Richmond who will serve their constituents rather than their own self-interest.”
Which is odd. Because, you know… McCollum is a lobbyist. Or was.
But I digress. This isn’t about McCollum’s lobbying for Cox Cablevision at all. No, ladies and gentlemen — this is about trust, and people who abuse the public trust by say — claiming they served 14 years in the U.S. Army Reserve when they didn’t really just scream trustworthy at you, right?
But let’s talk a little bit more about McCollum’s cozy relationship with Cox Cablevision. They were paying him, they weren’t paying him, McCollum was working for them, then he wasn’t… all a bit weird, right? Which probably explains why McCollum filed his campaign finance paperwork late and got fined:
Wagner, a Republican who represents the 7th District, filed his most recent finance report a day late. His campaign was fined $100 for that, Cortés said. The state’s online filing system automatically generates the fine for late reports, he said.
The Republican Party wrote to the State Board of Elections on Sept. 22 and accused the McCollum campaign of filing an incomplete campaign finance report by not listing McCollum’s salary from his previous employer, Cox Communications, as a donation. The GOP argued that, because Cox was paying McCollum this year while he campaigned but didn’t work, the pay amounted to a donation.
Cox has since severed ties with McCollum, who was a senior executive managing Virginia operations.
Oops.
So what does McCollum do? What any first-grade bully might do… cry, and say the other kid started it:
Three days after the GOP complaint, the state Democratic Party wrote to the State Board of Elections with the complaint about Wagner.
Smell that?
…but back to the meat of McCollum’s objections in front of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce.
His problem? Virginia has trade partners — partners such as Turkey — who kinda like it when Virginia sends over lawmakers to help understand how that partnership works. Or France, where the reactors there reprocess the fuel to a dot of plutonium the size of your thumbnail, making clean nuclear energy safe and reliable.
Nah — we’d never want that here.
McCollum, of course, is a lobbyist — the sort of individual who is finely crafted in the art of offering meals, trips, and so forth to lawmakers.
Of course, the real question at the heart of this? Can we really trust Gary McCollum to do anything he says? Given McCollum’s loose relationship with these pesky things called facts and reality, it’s hard to tell whether McCollum is exaggerating, merely hyperbolic, or is intentionally doing what every other pathological liar tends to do — embellish for personal gain (as McCollum’s own resume clearly demonstrates).
Perhaps we should start asking the soldiers whom McCollum served with these last 14 years on Reserve duty about McCollum’s motivations… or not.
