There is a reason any politician should be a little gun shy about calling his opponent a liar. It’s almost an unwritten rule that you stay away from the “L” word (not “liberal”, this time). It’s a charge that’s awful hard to walk back, and if you can’t back it up you can make yourself look awful bad. That’s why even the most hardened stick to euphemisms. Presumably Sean Sullivan has now learned that lesson the hard way:
Sean Sullivan, the Republican nominee in the 2nd District, charged in Tuesday’s debate that Courtney had never visited the Waterford power plant – prompting Courtney to reply “That’s not true” – and followed that claim up Wednesday morning with a press release saying the Democratic incumbent had been “caught lying” on the subject.
…
Dan Weekley, the managing director for northeast government affairs at Millstone, said he thought Courtney had visited shortly after winning the election in 2006. Asked if that included visits to the plant itself, Weekley said, “I absolutely remember that.”
”Both Sean Sullivan and Joe Courtney have been here, and Joe Courtney has truly reached out to us on a number of occasions on items that matter to us,” said Pete Hyde, a spokesman for the power station. Such visits by politicians to one of the region’s major business concerns are routine, he said.
Tony Sheridan, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut, said he had arranged a visit by Courtney when he worked at Millstone around 2002, the year of Courtney’s first, unsuccessful run for the 2nd District seat in Congress.
”I set up the appointment for him and toured with him personally when I was working there,” Sheridan said.
Faced with fairly massive evidence, Sullivan opted to stick to his guns, which only makes the situation worse, especially because he insisted on relying on an unnamed source:
In a phone interview, Sullivan stood by his remarks, saying he had been told during his own tour of the grounds that Courtney had never visited. Neither Sullivan nor a campaign spokesman would say who told them Courtney had not been to the plant.
(The Sullivan campaign repeated the assertion in a press release Wednesday evening, citing unnamed “sources at Dominion.”)
If Sullivan were actually in a race he had a chance of winning this could have really hurt him. The subject will probably be dropped only because, as his campaign spokesman has said, the race is a “lost cause”.
If you assert something that is not true, but believe it to be true, you are not lying. But if you continue to assert it in the face of massive evidence that it is untrue, that’s another thing. I won’t say what it is. I’ll leave that to the reader to decide.
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