West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who aspires to be a Republican senator, just sent his GOP primary opponent, Rep. Evan Jenkins, a cease and desist letter regarding supposedly “false and defamatory information in his TV ads.”
Jenkins claims in a new ad that Morrisey is “funded by the lobbying firm for Mike Bloomberg’s anti-gun group.” It also says that Morrisey “co-owns” the firm. Another ad even flashes a picture on screen of Morrisey shaking hands with Hillary Clinton.
Morrisey doesn’t actually co-own the lobbying shop in question – his wife does (as I noted earlier this year). The idea here is to mislead, although admittedly the technical answer to the question might hinge on how West Virginia law or colloquial language is supposed to refer to spouses’ common property.
Property questions aside, the picture of Morrisey shaking hands with Clinton is easily debunked. A spokesman for the Jenkins campaign even admitted that they photoshopped the picture of Morrisey shaking hands with Clinton, telling FactCheck.Org that they took “creative license” to put together the shot.
After putting the Jenkins campaign on “formal written notice,” Morrissey warns that “if you continue to disseminate the ad, you and your campaign bear responsibility for its content, and you will be knowingly disseminating an ad that is false and defamatory.”
The legal warning surpasses the normal campaign jousting. Even if the possibility of legal action is extremely remote, it raises the specter of a bitter end and perhaps an eventual refusal by next Tuesday’s loser to endorse the winner.
