Pittsburgh’s 38th state Senate District race has been heating up as Democrat Lindsey Williams has maintained a healthy-enough lead over her Republican opponent Jeremy Shaffer. Williams is a labor organize who came to prominence after she sued and won a case with the National Labor Relations Board after being fired for organizing a union at her previous job. Her opponent, Jeremy Shaffer, was a county supervisor who primaried and won against the incumbent Republican state Sen. Randy Vulakovich. His platform is something like “Make America Great Again.”
What do Republicans like Shaffer do when they are desperate? They go low and try to scare people. Yard signs have started popping up that look like Lindsey Williams’ signs, but with the word “SOCIALIST” added in white on a red banner. According to the Pittsburgh Current, Shaffer’s crew is playing what passes for coy among Republicans.
When asked whether the Shaffer campaign was responsible for the signs, Shaffer spokesperson Carl Fogliani avoided answering the question and instead sent a statement that called Williams a “card carrying socialist as a member of the DSA by her own admission.”
As the Current points out, Shaffer has released an attack ad against Williams, calling her a socialist, that features the sign in it.
God, that is fucking dumb. Williams addressed the sign at a rally over the weekend.
“You’ve see the negative ads, you’ve seen the negative mailers and today you saw negative yard signs,” Williams said, to a chorus of boos. “We’re not surprised, because this is what my opponent has done in the primaries, smearing a well-liked incumbent, and he’s trying to do it now. The best response to that is this room, because power concedes nothing without demand and we all are going to demand it.”
Williams posted this on her Facebook page:
Last night, negative yard signs were put up around the district. While I understand that my supporters are angry, I am asking everyone to treat these signs as you would any other political sign and leave them alone. Please be respectful of property, even (and especially) if our opponents are not showing that same respect.
With that being said, here are some things that you can do to help #fightforthe38th:
* Canvasses launching from our office on Babcock at 12:00 and 3:00 tomorrow;
* Phone banking;
* Putting up OUR yard signs;
* Telling your neighbors and friends about Lindsey;
* Donating at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/oct13signs
I will not let dirty politics from the other side distract me from talking about the issues and fighting for the people here.
This isn’t the only dirty trick in the Pittsburgh GOP bag. As Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 reports, Republicans around Shaffer are freaking out so badly, they are trying to create their own low-level Kenyan-birth-certificate claim.
A Republican Party legal memo is circulating behind the scenes. It maintains that Williams falls less than two months short of a requirement that she live continuously in Pennsylvania for four years to serve as a state senator.
"She's a lawyer. I think that, as a lawyer, she probably understands the Pennsylvania constitutional requirements, so I would hope that she would follow those laws," Shaffer told Pittsburgh's Action News 4.
Shaffer hasn’t been able to run on much in the way of policy, and like his craven political party, he’s spent most of his time and resources stewing in machinations that might gift him the seat. It’s an important distinction between the candidates because, in the end, Williams is promising to try and do things for the people who she would represent, and Shaffer is mostly promising that he wants to be a state senator.
Williams showed Pittsburgh's Action News 4 her Oct. 30, 2014 job offer from the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers and her signature on Nov. 2 --two days before that year's election -- accepting the job. She said she immediately started the process of moving back here, where she had gone to Duquesne University School of Law.
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