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We reported in the post below that it wasn’t until we pointed out the implied endorsement of Jim Moran on the 8th District Democratic Committee website that the committee replaced it with information about the primary. But it looks like that’s not a step in the direction of a fair primary. The Sun Gazette published a story with the headline, “Local Democrats Don’t Envision Debate Between Moran, Challenger”. (Article)

A debate is one of the most basic parts of the primary process. It’s clear that the 8th District Democrats, and Jim Moran by his silence on the whole matter, do not care in the least about the democratic process. They are infuriated that someone would dare challenge their dear leader Jim Moran. Surely there are ethical, fair-minded Democrats in the 8th District, even Moran supporters, so where are they? Why don’t they speak up and demand a fair primary between Moran and Bruce Shuttleworth? The 8th District Democratic Committee and Jim Moran are an insult to our democracy.

UPDATE 4/18/2012: Within a day after this was posted, the 8th District Democrats got rid of the circled area in the screenshot below and replaced it with information on the primary.

A week after Petitiongate broke and Moran primary challenger Bruce Shuttleworth was certified for the ballot, the 8th District Democratic Committee still hasn’t changed the implied endorsement of Jim Moran as the Democratic nominee on their website:

It’s clear, at least to the public, that the Democratic establishment here in the 8th District is not going to give fair treatment to Bruce Shuttleworth. You may say that it’s just a website, and that’s true, there may be changes happening within the committee, but as far as the public knows, the Democrat establishment is not even giving Shuttleworth a shot.

Here’s the full video of Shuttleworth’s press conference yesterday. See the posts below for our continued analysis of this developing story.

PETITIONGATE

UPDATE 9:00 pm: Here’s an excerpt from ARLnow’s recap of Bruce Shuttleworth’s press conference today:

Dubbing the incident “Petition-gate,” Shuttleworth ripped in to his Democratic opponent, 11-term incumbent Rep. Jim Moran, accusing Moran and his supporters of having “cheated the people.”

“I think this sordid episode makes it clear that my opponent and his supporters will do anything, resort to almost anything to deny a reasonable choice,” Shuttleworth said to a small crowd of supporters and 2-3 journalists. “What kind of pathetic, smoke-filled backroom, Tammany Hall corruption is going on around here?”

Without giving specifics, Shuttleworth said officials misplaced or lost a portion of his campaign’s petition signatures, leading to the initial determination that he had come up 18 signatures short. Shortly after his campaign filed a federal lawsuit against several officials — including Moran’s brother, Virginia Democratic Party Chairman Brian Moran — Shuttleworth said the missing signatures were found.

“Somewhat less than miraculously, when confronted with a lawsuit, those hard-to-find missing petitions magically showed up,” Shuttleworth said. “It has been made very clear that challenges to the throne are not welcome.”

…

“After more than a quarter century of Jim Moran at the helm of this party machine, when petitions for getting on the ballot of the United States Congress can be lost or misplaced for one second — one second! – what kind of banana republic is he trying to turn Northern Virginia in to?” Shuttleworth said emphatically. “How can this happen in America? Who will be held accountable?”

“There has been a grotesque miscarriage of justice,” Shuttleworth continued. “Without the recourse of legal action, I would not have made it on this ballot, and your voice would not have been heard… If the full truth in this case is ever revealed, I think voters will be very interested to see who is behind the curtain.”

Shuttleworth said “fighting corruption” was the main reason he entered the race.

“This is exactly the kind of anti-democratic nonsense that encouraged me to run in the first place,” Shuttleworth said. “You will have a choice on June 12th to send an honest man to Congress. This is a battle for the honest leadership of America. I say it’s time to clean house.”

Shuttleworth told ARLnow.com that he will be talking to his attorneys this afternoon about whether to move forward with his lawsuit.

Good for Shuttleworth for fighting back against the Moranic Democrat establishment. They must be shaking in their boots at the prospect of Shuttleworth moving forward with the lawsuit, as explained below.

***

Submitting 1,900 signatures and coming up 18 short? The Democrats probably didn’t want to let Bruce Shuttleworth take discovery – a pre-trial legal process in which Shuttleworth would have been able to collect evidence from the opposition, i.e. the Democratic Party – in the lawsuit; who knows what we would have found out. Were Jim Moran and his brother Brian, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, trying to fix the primary? What are they hiding that caused them to capitulate in the face of a lawsuit?

(1)  If the Democrats counted correctly, they cannot by law certify Shuttleworth as a candidate. (They can’t just say they did it to avoid the suit — if Shuttleworth did not get 1,000 valid signatures, as they claimed originally, they cannot by law certify him.)

(2)  If they counted incorrectly, and Shuttleworth got more than 1,000 signatures, how many signatures did they reverse and say were valid after all?  And what were the grounds for originally tossing them out? And how did they determine the originally-rejected signatures were valid after all?

(3)  Why did they wait until a lawsuit was filed before reversing course? What exactly prompted them to reverse course?

(4)  Were there any communications between the Moran campaign and the 8th District Democratic Committee, or the DPV and the 8CD Committee, prior to initially denying Shuttleworth and afterward?

According to AlexandriaNews.org, “the 8th District Democratic Committee discovered a number of signatures on petitions, which had not been previously certified although they were submitted on time and meet the criteria of a qualifying signature. Based on this new information, the Committee concluded that Shuttleworth has the required 1,000 signatures to be on the June 12th ballot as a Democratic candidate for Congress.”

They magically “discovered” previously unseen signatures? It’s obvious they didn’t want Shuttleworth to use discovery in the lawsuit.

Who knows what kind of emails are out there among the Moran and his friends Democrat establishment.

The Washington Post reports that the Democratic Party of Virginia has reversed course and will allow Shuttleworth’s name on the ballot. The Post also makes the interesting note that Shuttleworth was disqualified a few days after the Campaign for Primary Accountability, a new bipartisan group that seeks to boost primary challengers of entrenched incumbents of either party, announced it was targeting Moran.

Read the full story here.

It was announced last week that Jim Moran’s primary challenger, Bruce Shuttleworth, failed to qualify for the primary.

The Democratic Party of Virginia said Shuttleworth submitted 1,823 ballot petition signatures, but only 983 were valid, 17 short of the 1,000-signature requirement, and was thus disqualified.

Shuttleworth’s campaign announced today that it is suing the Democratic Party in federal court (lawsuit here). Here is their press release, emphases added:

Democratic Candidate for Congress Bruce Shuttleworth will be holding a Press Conference at Market Square at City Hall in Old Town Alexandria, 301 King Street, on Tuesday, April 10^that 1 pm to provide details on the lawsuit filed in Federal District Court: Shuttleworth v. Moran et al.

Mr. Shuttleworth’s team discovered that numerous irregularities had occurred during the process of counting the petition signatures. Of 1,823 petition signatures submitted to the 8th Congressional District Democratic Committee Chairwoman, only 983 were alleged to have been valid, only 17 short of the requirement to file as a primary Democratic Party Candidate.

The legal challenge asserts many missing petitions and highlights hundreds of valid signatures that were somehow omitted. One thousand signatures are required to be included on the ballot and the validation of each signature is currently at the sole discretion of the Chairperson of Virginia’s 8^th Congressional District Democratic Committee.

Bruce Shuttleworth stated “I take no pleasure in this Petition-gate.  I take no pleasure in having to resort to legal action with my Democratic Party – the greatest Party in the land. But I will fight for my constitutional rights and the constitutional rights of all the honest citizens of Virginia who signed my petitions and who remain steadfast in their support of my mission to combat corruption, protect the vulnerable and grow our economy.”

Those familiar with this qualification process know that it is highly unlikely for almost half of a serious candidate’s petition signatures to be invalid. So what’s going on here?

Moran had a seemingly-credible primary challenger in 2010, Ronald Mitchell, who was also disqualified by the party. Now it’s happening again?

RetireJimMoran doesn’t want to promote conspiracy theories, but there definitely seems to be something fishy going on. Shuttleworth appears to be a legitimate, credible candidate, and it is very unusual that half of a candidate’s petition signatures would be disqualified. Democratic Party of Virginia Chairman Brian Moran – Jim Moran’s brother – is named in the lawsuit.

Did Moran and his friends in the 8th District Democratic Committee try to smother a legitimate primary challenger? This will get very interesting…

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Navy veteran Bruce Shuttleworth is challenging Jim Moran in the Democratic primary. RetireJimMoran got the following message from Glenn McCormick of Shuttleworth’s campaign, published verbatim:

For your information, not all Democrats are happy with Jim Moran’s ethical lapses. One, Bruce Shuttleworth, has decided to do something about it and challenge him in the Primary. Please check out his website (http://www.shuttleworthforcongress.org/), and perhaps pass along to your database and supporters.

This week, Jim Moran wrote a letter to the General Manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority:

***

Dear General Manager Sarles:

It has come to my attention that an ad for a film disparaging the health reform law includes the phrase “Go to h[---] Barack” was recently placed in the Clarendon Metro stop in Arlington, VA. This ad is deeply disrespectful of the President of the United States and does not belong in the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) network.

I accept that WMATA should display ads, including those of a political nature, in the Metro system in order to secure the revenue they provide. But minimum standards of decency must be maintained through a vetting process. I assume such a process exists, but surely this ad does not meet those standards. I call on you to remove this ad and any others like it from the system.

***

There are three problems with Moran’s objections to the ad:

1) WMATA maintains that the ad is protected under the First Amendment. In response to Moran’s letter, a WMATA spokesman said, “WMATA advertising has been ruled by the courts as a public forum protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, and we may not decline ads based on their political content. WMATA does not endorse the advertising on our system, and ads do not reflect the position of the Authority.” (Source: Politico)

2) Moran did not make a sound over the “DC Doin’ It!” campaign, where sexually explicit ads were plastered all over Metrobuses. Surely that was more indecent than a curse word.

3) Moran never made a peep when George W. Bush was called every disparaging name under the sun for eight years. Moran’s fight with WMATA is not about respect for the president; it’s a shallow, politically motivated attempt to protect his dear Barack Obama.

Perhaps Jim Moran should keep minimum standards of decency himself:

“When I become chairman [of a House appropriations subcommittee], I’m going to earmark the s**t out of it.” -- Jim Moran to the Arlington County Democratic Committee, June 9, 2006

“I don’t know where the f**k Obama is on this or anything else. They’re AWOL.” -- Jim Moran to The Hill, December 9, 2010

“Better that the s**t hit the fan this week, and try to fix things next week before we go to Easter recess.” -- Jim Moran to the New York Times, April 6, 2011

Jim Moran voted in favor of a bill to ban insider trading this week.

It’s a classic case of do as I say, not as I do.

The movement to ban insider trading started with the release of a book that exposed the practice. The book specifically singles out Moran for his egregious use of the practice – in October 2008, Moran attended a “terrifying” closed door briefing with top government economic officials warning that a financial crisis was about to hit. The next day, Moran dumped his shares in ninety different companies that were set to be hit hard by the recession. The crisis hit a few days later.

This is a classic case of do as I say, not as I do.