Kudos to ThinkProgress for catching this:
Spanish photojournalist Pau Coll Sanchez launched a social media campaign on Monday targeting Republican candidate for Virginia governor, Ed Gillespie. Coll is demanding that Gillespie to stop using his work without permission and to pay him what he’s owed.
Gillespie’s campaign appropriated one of Coll’s photographs in a political attack ad about the MS-13 gang, ThinkProgress reported last month.
Coll and his photo agency, RUIDO Photo in Spain, told ThinkProgress that after contacting Gillespie’s campaign and being ignored, they decided to launch a public campaign demanding that Gillespie stop using the photograph in the ad, which has been broadcast aggressively on television commercials since it first aired.
Yes, the image was used in a series of ads from Gillespie where he was trying to channel the very man he’s trying to distance himself from:
It's perhaps not surprising that Gillespie is taking a cautious approach when it comes to the commander in chief. Virginia was one of the few swing states that Trump lost in 2016, but the race was close and he still enjoys healthy support among Republicans there. Gillespie's problem is that moderate Republicans and independent voters, both of which are growing in Virginia, appear to be increasingly wary of Trump.
Gillespie's recipe is to embrace Trump's policies without embracing the man. He checks all the traditional Republican boxes on social issues and fiscal policy and he is emphasizing key tenets of the Trump campaign, including a heavy focus on immigration. He's currently running a hard-hitting ad tying illegal immigration to the rise of the MS-13 gang in Virginia, a position that led Trump to tweet his support.
But despite their similar stances, Gillespie still refuses to connect himself to Trump. When
askedby Virginia's WVEC-TV if he is happy with Trump's endorsement, Gillespie replied, "I wasn't surprised he endorsed me." He also refuses to say if Trump will appear alongside him in the closing days of the campaign. Vice President Mike Pence campaigned for Gillespie Saturday night, but at this point, a visit by the President himself has not been ruled in or out.
"We don't discuss campaign strategy with the media," Gillespie spokesman David Abrams said. Similarly, the White House declined to comment.
While the campaign and the White House remain coy, talk show host John Fredericks, who chaired Trump's campaign in Virginia and hosts a popular syndicated radio show, claimed the two sides are preparing for a last-minute rally. But neither the campaign or the White House were willing to back up his claim.
Trump also might be reluctant to expend political capital if Gillespie -- who was trailing Northam, 53% to 40%, in a
Washington Post-Schar School poll released earlier this month -- isn't assured of victory. Sources have told CNN
the President was furious after establishment-backed Alabama Sen. Luther Strange lost a primary race last month despite his endorsement. As a GOP adviser to the White House put it, "Losing is bad for (Trump's) brand."
But for Gillespie, it’s impossible for Trump to be avoided in this race:
“There is so much focus on the activity and the machinations in Washington,” said George Allen, the former Republican governor and senator who ran statewide four times. “With President Trump, whatever he tweets becomes the news till whatever he tweets next.”
With the president rampaging through news cycles seemingly every day, the biggest question looming before Mr. Gillespie is whether it is worth the risk of trying to harness Mr. Trump’s total-eclipse-of-the-sun attention-getting skills to rouse conservative voters.
His campaign and the Republican Governor’s Association signaled to the White House at a meeting this spring that they preferred the reliable hand of Vice President Mike Pence, who campaigned with Mr. Gillespie on Saturday, over Mr. Trump in a state where the president is loathed in the vote-rich population centers but well-liked in many rural areas.
But trailing in every public poll, Mr. Gillespie is now engaged in a robust debate with his advisers about whether he should ask the president to stump with him, according to multiple Republican officials familiar with the conversations.
Those in favor of bringing Mr. Trump in for a rally argue that Mr. Gillespie will be linked to Mr. Trump regardless and, in a state where turnout plummets in nonpresidential years, that the president can jolt his supporters who may have been indifferent about the race or uneasy with an establishment-aligned candidate such as Mr. Gillespie, a former George W. Bush adviser and Republican National Committee chairman.
But the camp urging Mr. Gillespie to keep his distance from Mr. Trump counters that it would be malpractice to embrace a polarizing president who failed to win even 30 percent of the vote in Fairfax County, the most populous jurisdiction in the state and once a suburban battleground.
As they consider their options, Gillespie supporters have an object lesson: Mr. Trump’s ill-fated rally for Senator Luther Strange in Alabama, where he could not resist veering off-message. At that rally, Mr. Trump started his feud with the N.F.L. while offering a backhanded endorsement of Mr. Strange’s rival, Roy Moore.
“Having watched what a great job he did for Luther Strange, I’m not sure I’d want that,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a former state attorney general, suggesting that the president could bring up the bloodshed in Charlottesville with little warning. “Trump rallies are about Trump.”
Then there is the president’s calculation: Would he even want to risk attaching himself to a potential loser so soon after the Alabama race, in which he felt burned, according to White House officials. West Wing advisers say Mr. Trump is willing to record automated calls for Mr. Gillespie but is not clamoring to fire up Air Force One for the trip to Roanoke.
Mr. Trump has tweeted twice about the Virginia race, including on Saturday night, when he wrote that “Democrats in the Southwest part of Virginia have been abandoned by their Party,” as Mr. Pence was on the way to the region.
And as Jennifer Rubin points out, it’s Gillespie’s own darn fault for going the Trump route:
This is a problem entirely of Gillespie’s own making. He need not have hyped the Confederate monuments issue in his fundraising literature, nor adopted the position that they should remain in Virginia’s cities and towns. He need not have raised the phony “sanctuary cities” issue and run an ad featuring menacing-looking gang members, an ad dubbed the “Willie Horton” ad of the cycle.
He could have denounced Trump for sabotaging the Affordable Care Act exchanges, putting Virginians and other Americans’ health care at risk. He could have spoken up for the “dreamers,” imploring Congress to remedy the humanitarian crisis that Trump created. He could have objected to GOP health-care plans that would have made health care for rural and older Virginians more expensive. He could have withheld his support for Trump for president.
Gillespie could have followed his own advice that he gave in 2015. “The demographics of Virginia have changed and geographic voting patterns reflect it. The GOP must adapt to that fact,” he said. “It’s all but impossible for a Republican to win Virginia today without getting votes from traditionally non-Republican voters, and it is impossible to get those votes if you don’t ask for them.”
Gillespie could have remained committed to comprehensive immigration reform. “There’s a growing sense that this is an opportunity that should be taken,” he warned just a few years ago. “There’s no instinct like a survival instinct.”
All of that would have be consistent with the Ed Gillespie who was chairman of the Republican National Committee, adviser to President George W. Bush, chairman of Bob McDonnell’s successful gubernatorial race in 2009 and senior adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. It would have been consistent with his pragmatic message in his 2014 race for senator, in which he lost by a hair to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).
Let’s send a message to Gillespie that Trumpism isn’t welcome in Virginia. Click below to donate and get involved with Northam’s campaign, the Democratic Ticket, and the state party to win the House of Delegates:
Ralph Northam for Governor
Tim Kaine for U.S. Senate
Justin Fairfax for Lt. Governor
Mark Herring for Attorney General
Virginia Democratic Party