LuAnn Bennett’s Campaign Panics Following Botched Interview Cover-Up

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and where a campaign panics and circles the wagons around an entangled candidate, you know there’s a story they’d like covered up.

Damage control became the top priority for some Virginia Democrats today following the release of a now-deleted interview given by LuAnn Bennett to the Democratic blog Blue Virginia, in which the Congressional candidate gave a series of embarrassing answers which would swiftly be deleted by the site’s publisher.

Bearing Drift broke the story early yesterday morning, at 10:18 AM, releasing a series of excerpts from the now-scrubbed interview.

Before the damaging interview was deleted and swept under the rug, Bennett spoke of her love for taxpayer-funded travel junkets, offered additional background on being recruited from out of the district, belittled rural voters from “left behind” small towns, and even guessed, “my mom would vote for Trump.”

Bearing Drift‘s revelation of the deleted material clearly touched a nerve at the Bennett campaign, and it wouldn’t be long before the controversy spread to the Loudoun Times-Mirror.

The circling of the wagons had begun, even though by doing so, the guilty parties have implicitly admitted to the presence of a smoking gun and have validated the importance of the questions raised by the now-deleted material.

 

Interview’s Publisher Lies to Cover it Up

“The interview was long and rambling,” Blue Virginia’s Lowell Feld told the Times-Mirror, as he attempted to explain why the post vanished down the memory hole. “I posted it and I didn’t like it. It was too long, and then I decided I would break it up.”

Feld’s attempt to evade responsibility for his role in this coverup does not fit the facts.

Although Feld deleted over half of Bennett’s words, allegedly to split the material into segments, he also edited one of his own questions after it was asked, moved four paragraphs of Bennett’s responses between different questions, and selectively removed damaging material from within her answers.

Of the nine paragraphs in the re-published interview, only one remains true to its original form. The rest have been edited or rearranged.

That’s not splitting an interview. Rather, it’s fabricated editing.

 

Bennett’s Campaign Gives Everyone a Good Laugh

Getting caught red handed is not new for LuAnn Bennett’s campaign, which has been involved in all manner of campaign hijinks, from scrubbing a phony charity from Bennett’s biography to falsely attacking her opponent over Zika response efforts.

In this interview, though, Bennett’s campaign had been caught red handed on several issues they had been avoiding. Like a deer in the headlights, they watched frozen in shock, before jumping out of the way at the very last moment.

It was at that moment they chose to insult the intelligence of every voter in the district by publishing a statement grossly out of touch with the controversy at hand.

Bennett spokesman Robert Howard, unable to craft even halfway believable spin, framed discussion of her fondness for junkets as criticism of Bennett, “having an understanding of world affairs.”

Howard, of course, is responding to Bearing Drift’s piece from this morning which revealed that Bennett fondly remembers the taxpayer-funded travel junkets during her marriage to former Congressman Jim Moran.

Bennett original answer to the question is as follows:

Q. What about the potential for a member of Congress to impact policy and help people very broadly?

A. “[Jim Moran and I] traveled a lot” on Congressional delegations…those are not boondoggles, by the way, they are working trips…from the time they got up to a dinner late at night at the embassy. We traveled to the Middle East a lot, we traveled to Asia, and that was really eye-opening to me…those issues started to resonate with me as you read things about foreign policy and other countries and conflicts? once you’ve been there, it becomes much more relevant and you have a deeper understanding of what’s happening in the world and the United States’ role in the world.”

This entire response was deleted from the original interview.

When asked about impacting policy and helping people, LuAnn Bennett’s first thought was free trips to exotic destinations.

 

State Democratic Party Rushes in With Fire Extinguisher

Attempts at damage control didn’t end with the busted blogger and the campaign itself. The Democratic Party of Virginia’s Communications Director Emily Bolton jumped in with a series of Tweets and press releases attempting to distract from the real issue at hand: namely, the questions raised by the damaging answers LuAnn Bennett gave in her now-deleted interview.

Without addressing Bennett’s meltdown, Bolton preposterously attempted to shift blame back onto Comstock, as though the Congresswoman had anything to do with the damning answers Bennett provided or Feld’s complicity in the cover-up.

 

The Questions Raised Demand Answers

In her interview, Bennett was caught red handed reminiscing about Congressional travel junkets in response to a question about helping people through federal policy.

Of everything which goes along with the Congressional experience, why are Congressional travel junkets the first thing which comes to Bennett’s mind? When she was married to former Congressman Jim Moran, how many junkets did she travel on, and how much did taxpayers contribute towards Bennett’s travel?

Did Bennett attend any briefings with Moran while overseas on their Congressional junkets?

The interview also shed new light on Bennett’s weak ties to the Tenth District and her recruitment by out-of-district leaders.

Why won’t LuAnn Bennett come clean about her residency and admit she split her time between Washington, D. C. and Arlington before moving to the Tenth District to run for Congress?

If she is in fact a resident of rural Delaplane, then why did she heap praise upon the campaign lifestyle for giving her time out in the country, saying in her interview, “I’ve never experienced [time in the country] more than in this campaign, going out to the western part of the district”?

Why did she look down her nose at rural voters, saying in the tone so common among political elitists that residents of “left behind” small towns deserved her understanding and pity for holding the wrong political opinions and watching the wrong news channels?

Why does her campaign continue to denigrate each and every person voting for Trump, regardless of individual motives, even though Bennett guesses in her own interview that, “my mom would vote for Trump”?

Would Bennett speak ill of her own mother for voting for Trump the way she attacks other Republicans on a routine basis?

 

The Bottom Line

The Tenth District Congressional race is a contest between two candidates offering competing visions for the nation’s future.

The issues are what ought to matter, and to that end, each candidate must be honest about what they believe and what they will do if elected. They must also pass the character task by being forthright in describing a worthy biographical background.

What Bennett said in her now-deleted interview is of the highest importance to the decision which voters will face in November. Her views, her background, and her character are most relevant – not the feeble attempts at damage control.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Bennett’s avoidance of responsibility makes answers to these questions all the more necessary and intriguing.