CH 30. Fun with Racism: Franken baselessly ascribes questionable flier to Republicans

On page 257 (paperback, p. 266) Franken reprints the text of this flier allegedly found in “black neighborhoods” shortly before the hotly contested 2002 Maryland gubernatorial election (Republican Bob Ehrlich vs. Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend).

Franken decries the flier as a racist effort to prevent blacks from coming out to vote, being in part that the election was scheduled for November 5th.

However, the truth, as reported in the Baltimore Sun, was that the flier was found by Democratic campaign volunteers² with no indipendant confirmation or corroboration of the claims made.

Neither Democratic officials nor the Sun brought forward a single regular citizen to say that he or she had found the offending flier.³ In fact, officials could only show that a total of four of these fliers had been found⁴, and all of them at a single place⁵, a school.⁶

When pressed for evidence that Republicans had anything to do with this mysterious flier, a Democratic spokesman had to admit, “In a sense, we have no proof.” ⁷

Republicans and others questioned the flier’s authenticity as there were literally no facts to go off of other than the word of partisan Democrat volunteers.

The flier could have been a non-partisan prank, a Democrat hoax to smear Republicans, or an actual attempt to suppress Democratic votes. There is only assumption to point towards Republican guilt, and legitimate question as to weather these 4 fliers were not made by Democrats and never distributed at all; yet Franken boldly labels it a case-closed Republican crime involving race while excluding the full context of the situation.

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Notes:

1  The displayed flier is from talkingpointsmemo.com.

2  Howard Libit and Tim Craig, “Allegations Fly as Election Day Nears,” Baltimore Sun, November 4, 2002.

3  Ibid.

4  Joel Mowbray, “The Color of Election Day,” National Review, November 5, 2002. [See also Jonathan V. Last, “The Floridazation of American Politics,” The Weekly Standard, November 5, 2002.]

5  Ibid.

6  Libit and Craig, “Allegations Fly as Election Day Nears” and Mowbray, “The Color of Election Day.”

7 Mowbray, “The Color of Election Day.”