Womp womp:
A campaign spokesperson for Rep. David Jolly, a Republican Senate candidate in Florida, admitted to BuzzFeed News on Tuesday that the campaign has edited Jolly’s Wikipedia page to remove unflattering information.
Sarah Bascom, Jolly’s spokesperson, confirmed that the campaign removed references to Jolly’s past career as a lobbyist, his association with the Church of Scientology, his support for same sex marriage, and political contributions he made to Democratic candidates. Bascom accused a unspecified rival campaign of adding what she described as “campaign propaganda” in the first place.
Two edits were made — one on March 15 and one on April 4 — by a user named “Bascomcomm”. Bascom is the president of Bascom Communications & Consulting, a political firm in Florida.
“We were notified a few months ago that a consultant who works for one of our us senate [sic] opponents has been intentionally editing the David Jolly Wikipedia page to follow their opposition research messaging so they can use it in a mail or digital campaign,” Bascom told BuzzFeed News in an email.
“Once we found about it, we went in and attempted to correct his page to be consistent with all of his public bios.”
Each piece of information deleted by the campaign was cited, and some of it has been included in his Wikipedia page for more than a year. After the Jolly campaign deleted the information the first time, on March 15, it was reinstated later in the day by another user. On April 4, the campaign again deleted the information before it was again reinstated.
The BuzzFeed article highlights which areas have been removed and edited.