Friday, May 23, 2008
Special prosecutor to investigate attack ad
Botetourt County prosecutor Joel Branscom will determine whether to file charges.
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From The Roanoke Times
Joel Branscom has been appointed as a special prosecutor to determine whether laws were broken by a citizens group that launched a campaign attack ad earlier this month.
Related stories
- Wishneff may sue over coverage (May 9, 2008)
- Prosecutors to review paper's ad (May 8, 2008)
- Wishneff admits link to attack ad (May 7, 2008)
- Ad against candidates ran with false name (May 6, 2008)
A special prosecutor has been appointed to determine whether laws were broken by a citizens group that launched an attack ad against a candidate for the Roanoke City Council earlier this month.
Joel Branscom, the top prosecutor in Botetourt County, was selected to handle the case.
Roanoke Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell asked for the appointment after conducting a preliminary inquiry into the circumstances of a full-page ad that ran in two newspapers questioning the credentials of council candidate Court Rosen.
"You have potential for violation of the law, but there has been no factual investigation done," said Caldwell, who stepped aside from the case because of his close ties to the city Democratic Committee. Rosen ran as a Democrat.
Branscom said Thursday that his office was drafting a letter to the state attorney general, seeking approval for an investigation by Virginia State Police. While the attorney general must sign off on any investigation involving an elected official, Branscom said it's too soon to say for sure if the probe is headed in that direction.
"I don't have any preconceived notions on it," Branscom said. "We're not investigating anybody in particular. We're just looking into the circumstances."
The ad in question, which ran in The Roanoke Times and The Roanoke Star-Sentinel over the four days leading up to the May 6 election, was paid for by Citizens for Sensible Decisions.
That group is not registered as a political action committee, as it was required by law to do, according to officials with the Virginia State Board of Elections. What's more, the ad that ran in The Roanoke Times included a fake name of the person who supposedly paid for it.
Councilman Brian Wishneff -- a rival of Rosen's who was involved with the ad -- has said he made up the name "Joe Smith" at the suggestion of an advertising sales representative with The Roanoke Times. Wishneff said the sales representative insisted that it was the newspaper's policy to have the name of an individual appear along with the organization that sponsors a political ad.
In an earlier interview, Wishneff said he came up with an alias not to mislead anyone, but out of frustration during an argument with the sales representative over whether a name was required in the first place.
A spokeswoman for The Roanoke Times has denied that anyone at the paper encouraged Wishneff or anyone else to provide a false name.
Wishneff narrowly lost his council seat to Rosen, who was the third-place finisher in a six-candidate race for three city council seats. Wishneff's term ends June 30.
Winfred Noell, treasurer of Citizens for Sensible Decisions, defended the content of the ad, which portrayed Rosen as an inexperienced 29-year-old with no track record of community involvement.
"All I know is that there wasn't anything in the ad that wasn't true," Noell said.
Some people have said the negative ad actually helped Rosen, Noell said, "but if they want to complain about it, that's their right, I guess."
According to a court order appointing Branscom as special prosecutor, Caldwell's office was asked by the city Electoral Board to investigate the circumstances "surrounding the political advertisement in The Roanoke Times ... concerning advertisements paid for by 'Joe Smith' and to determine whether any illegalities occurred."
Officials with the State Board of Elections have said they are not aware of a law that forbids someone from making up a name for a political advertisement. But there are other laws that apply to the case, they said.
For example, state law requires that an ad attacking one candidate include the name of any other candidate who might benefit from the message, if the candidate who benefited worked with the sponsor of the ad. Wishneff has said he consulted with members of Citizens for Sensible Decisions about the ad's wording.
Caldwell said it is too early to say what the penalties might be if a person or organization were convicted of violating election laws. Some provisions of state law call for civil penalties of $1,000 or less, although there is also the possibility of a criminal misdemeanor conviction in the case of willful violations.
