It’s easy to say that some politicians are trying to recreate reality in the way that fits their world view. In the case of Republican candidate for House District 47 Paul Workman, it seems that if you can’t find a picture of Rep. Valinda Bolton, D-Austin, standing near a photo of Pres. Barack Obama, well, why not just make one up?
While combing the Workman website yesterday, we pressed on the button marked Who is Valinda Bolton? It’s a dead link now, but yesterday it pulled up a pop-up window, and you can see a screen grab of it above.
The photo is of Bolton at a meeting at the Texas AFL-CIO offices in Austin (we called her campaign, and they’re not quite sure when it was taken.) She’s in front of an AFL-CIO banner with Congressman Lloyd Doggett watching her, and a big “Organizing for America” plaque on the podium. However, if that’s not enough to motivate Demmycrat-haters to the polls, the Workman campaign added a photo of Obama on the wall. Squint and you can just about make it out.
How do we know they added it? Because they said so, right under the picture:
Because Ms. Bolton and President Obama are so closely aligned, we have taken the liberty to add Obama’s picture in this photograph. The remainder of the photograph is unaltered.
We called Ed Sills, communications director over at the AFL-CIO, and asked him about the picture. After running down to the conference room to check it out, he ran back to say, no, there was not a picture of Obama there. What was there? A photo of the union’s Secretary-Treasurer John Patrick.
Sills was completely baffled by why Workman’s camp had done this. “You might as well paint bunny ears on her. What’s the point, exactly?” he mused. While “it wouldn’t be out of character” for the union to have a picture of Obama there, he said, the simple fact is that they don’t and they didn’t. Sills observed, “The fact that they Photoshopped it in certainly says something about the trustworthiness of the Workman campaign.”
Bolton’s campaign manager Elizabeth Hartman called it “a pretty cheap shot” but she wasn’t surprised that Workman had taken it. “He doesn’t have anything else,” she said. “Is he going to talk about his achievements in the community?” Comparing Workman’s career as a developer to Bolton’s long career as an advocate for battered and abused spouses and children, she said, “He may build buildings, but she’s saved lives.”
Workman’s campaign manager Eric Bearse was contacted for comment, but so far, there has been no response.
This article appears in October 8 • 2010.
