CRABILL CAMPAIGN RESPONSE

How a blatant Democrat lie has intruded on their grief

As a mother of four children, my heart goes out to the signers of this open letter. I can only imagine their pain over the senseless loss of their loved ones. Though time has passed since these tragedies, I know their grief will never leave them. I pray that, while their memories remain strong, their heartache lessens as the years pass.

Unfortunately, as a person seeking public office, I am forced to address the reason that has caused these good people to become involved in this election campaign. I must set the record straight.

The genesis of this situation is a deliberate partisan lie perpetrated by zealous political operatives of the Virginia Democrat Party seeking to damage my campaign for the benefit of my opponent. That lie has misled the signers of this open letter and many others into believing that I have said something I never said and never would, and that I have taken a stand that is abhorrent to me.

The signers’ open letter contains this sentence: “Her statement that if she cannot get what she wants at the election box, she will get it at ‘the bullet box.’” This untruth began with a Democrat “dirty trick.”

Several months ago, a political field operative on the payroll of the Virginia Democrat Party recorded a speech I made at a rally at the old Northumberland Courthouse in Heathsville. In that speech, I read a Patrick Henry quotation in which the 18th Century American patriot lamented the fact that they had no election thus their only recourse was war. I responded that we are able to fight our battle at the ballot box before we would have to refer to the bullet box as our Founders were forced to do.

The Democrats altered their recording of my speech, maliciously editing it to make it seem I had called for an armed insurrection if I did not win the Nov. 3 election. Then they circulated it far and wide.

As a result, my family and I received an alarming number of frightening hate mail and telephone calls, forcing me to remove the names of my husband and children from my campaign’s website and literature. My opponent aided in creating this situation by spreading the Democrat lie to his supporters and the media.

The signers of this open letter demand that I apologize to them. That is difficult for something I never said or did. As a Christian, though, I pray for their and others’ understanding that I am innocent in this political subterfuge by the Democrats, and I pray, too, for alleviation of the letter signers’ grief and pain.