Fear and Loathing in Staunton column by Chris Graham
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So I was talking with a Staunton city-leader friend the other night about the apparently dormant case of the newspaper ad that spawned so much controversy on the eve of the Staunton City Council elections back in May.
You might remember the bare details of the story – that it involved a group of candidates running for open seats on the city council, who pooled their resources together without really identifying themselves as having done so, and who obviously had a big issue with the way city manager Steve Owen has been doing his job.
(Sound familiar, Waynesboro?)
The ad ran afoul of campaign-finance law in Virginia, which is saying a lot, because campaign-finance law in Virginia is about as lax as you can get while still being able to say that you have a law on the books.
We’re three months-plus past the election now, and it doesn’t seem that there’s been anything done to follow up on this by the Commonwealth’s attorney office in the Clean City, I noted this to my city-leader friend, who confirmed that he hadn’t heard anything new in terms of developments with the case since May.
“I guess Ray’s been so tied up in the porn case that he just hasn’t had the time,” my friend told me, then sighed sarcastically.
Which I can perfectly understand. I mean, all we’re talking about here is an organized effort to try to subvert the voting process, the core upon which the very fabric of our democratic republican form of government is based quite precariously.
Robertson had bigger fish to fry. Some guy was trying to sell porn movies out on Springhill Road. That attempted-coup thing, that can wait.
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Chris Graham
