Breaking news: Lisa Savage is exactly who she says she is.
In a video released on the eve of Election Day, discredited right-wing organization Project Veritas said they “exposed” Savage, a progressive independent candidate in Maine’s U.S. Senate race, pointing to views she has campaigned on all along.
A tweet by Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe promoting the video accuses Savage of helping Democrat Sara Gideon in a race to unseat Sen. Susan Collins that will feature ranked-choice voting. In grainy footage released by the group, Savage can be heard saying “either one of us getting in would help change the Senate,” referring to her or Gideon winning the race.
But the fact that Savage prefers Gideon over Collins is hardly news, as Savage is publicly encouraging her supporters to rank Gideon second when they cast their ballot.
The video also features discussion about Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. While saying she would be excited to work with him if elected to the U.S. Senate, Savage said Sanders — an independent who caucuses with the Democratic Party and twice ran for the party’s presidential nomination — is making a mistake by working within the two-party system.
Although she has indicated that she would prefer Gideon over Collins, Savage has been publicly critical of both parties throughout her campaign for Senate.
The Project Veritas video also quoted Savage — who has centered policies such as Medicare for All and a Green New Deal in her campaign — as saying she’s “happy to be called a socialist.”
Savage has made no secret of the fact that she is running on left-wing policies, with her campaign touting the endorsement of the Maine chapter of Democratic Socialists of America in September.
In a tweet about the video, Savage said the Project Veritas employee was dishonest with her about his motives.
“You don’t have to lie about ‘buying a puppet for your autistic child’ & secretly record me to find out where I stand on the issues — you can just check my website,” Savage tweeted.
“This idiot has posted a half dozen tweets this morning touting his secret video of[Lisa Savage], saying… what she always says,” tweeted Sun Journal political reporter Steve Collins, referring to O’Keefe. “The man can call himself a journalist, but he’s not even a good propagandist.”
Project Veritas has a long history of running sting video operations that feature dishonest editing of their subjects. For example, a recent video by the group accusing Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar of voter fraud was found to be a “coordinated disinformation campaign,” according to researchers.
The group’s deceptive editing tactics date back to a 2009 video that resulted in the community action group ACORN shutting down, even though a probe later showed ACORN did nothing wrong.
In recent years, however, Project Veritas had made a series of embarrassing blunders while trying to conduct sting operations, including a previous video released in Maine in partnership with the Maine Heritage Policy Center, which was deceptively edited and ultimately proven not to show the misconduct O’Keefe and the Center claimed.
The group’s attempt to target Savage comes as a new poll released by Emerson College shows that ranked-choice voting could play a role in deciding the winner of the U.S. Senate race. The survey shows Gideon leading with 48 percent of the vote, followed by Collins with 42 percent, Savage at 5 percent and Max Linn at 1 percent. If those percentages hold for the final results, the race will go into a ranked-choice voting runoff, with no candidate receiving 50 percent of the vote in the initial round.
In the Emerson poll, 61 percent of Savage and Linn supporters support Gideon as their second choice; 14 percent support Collins.
Photo: Lisa Savage. | Via Lisa Savage for U.S. Senate Facebook page.
The Link LonkNovember 03, 2020 at 01:52AM
https://mainebeacon.com/james-okeefes-attempted-sting-in-maines-u-s-senate-race-flops-hard/
James O'Keefe's attempted sting in Maine's U.S. Senate race flops hard - mainebeacon.com
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