Politics breeds, and thrives upon, rumors. As often as not, the rumors are utterly baseless and are bred for the pure purpose of sowing discord. Such is the case with a rumor circulating right now that Ken Cuccinelli and E. W. Jackson have held private conversations about Jackson dropping his bid to become Virginia’s next lieutenant governor.
I stumbled across what appears to be the source of this rumor on Facebook. It comes from the keyboard of Ben Tribbett, who wrote:
That’s pretty explosive. But this is Ben, who has long been noted for his tendency to stir the pot. It felt wrong (such a move would probably be illegal) read wrong (neither Cuccinelli nor Jackson looks for easy ways out of anything) and so must be wrong. The only other arguments I have heard so far that E.W. must leave came from former DPVA chairman Paul Goldman, who early on offered a series of articles advising the GOP on how they could legally jettison Jackson. Not exactly a friendly source.
But I wanted more than my hunch, and years of knowing and covering Ken Cuccinelli, to go on. So I contacted the Cuccinelli campaign for perspective. And I got quite an earful. Not only was all this tossing Jackson over the side stuff utter nonsense, it had Virginia’s mainstream, fully accredited and vetted press corps in a tizzy. Reporters were calling to nail the story. And they were calling the Jackson campaign, too.
Which raises the question: why do reporters fall for Ben’s BS? It’s easy to see why — he schmoozes them. That’s neither a sin nor anything new, but it also conditions them to act on things he pulls out of thin air. Ken’s going to ditch Jackson? They’ve talked about it? The local pressies immediately smell the Pulitzer, or at minimum, a chance to get five minutes on air with Piers Morgan.
In some cases, reporters leap at such rumors because they lack either context or a basic grasp of history. That can be fixed, eventually. Other times, they reach out of fear — if they don’t get the scoop, someone else will (and God help them if it’s a web site).
But what can’t be fixed is their gullibility. They have that in spades.
And have I told you what I’ve heard? Early last week, a well-connected Democratic source here in Richmond told me that Terry McAuliffe was going to ditch his gubernatorial bid and go back to running GreenTech full-time.
Now let’s see if any local pressies bite on that one…
