Here is an irony of political opportunism.
After months of protest, broken families and some real social progress, #defundthepolice is among the top-ranking hashtags in Pollchatter’s election-Twitter watch.
However, it’s entirely Republicans driving it.
Yesterday’s massive surge came largely from retweets of a post by GOP challenger Sean Parnell in PA-17. Parnell accuses Democratic incumbent Conor Lamb of being “a partisan who stands with Speaker Pelosi, Ilhan Omar & AOC over 90% of the time,” and of standing with “protestors who want to #DefundThePolice” in that district.
Here’s Lamb’s actual position, as recently reported by the Post-Gazette:
In a town hall Thursday, Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Mt. Lebanon, said he would support federal funding so police departments can provide better training and pay for their officers.
“I think a lot of times we’re asking police to do a thousand different things,” Mr. Lamb said, noting the base hourly wage for a police officer in Western Pennsylvania is $12.45. “What I’m gonna be focusing on, among many things, is support not for less policing or not for measures to harm the police in favor of someone else, but for more effective and better policing.”
To his credit, Lamb attended and spoke at least one protest following George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis.
This is a deeply gerrymandered district, and Lamb’s upset victory in 2018 is extraordinarily fragile. The most recent polls, now somewhat elderly, show him with only a whisker-thin lead over Parnell. Let’s hope facts speak louder here than GOP distortions.
We’re also seeing significant retweets of the hashtag in WA-08, where a similar GOP campaign is employing similar untruths to paint moderate Democratic incumbent Kim Schrier as an antifa radical who “voted to #defundthepolice.
(Which, let’s always remember, antifa means “anti-fascist,” and opposing fascism is not a radical stance unless you are yourself… a… never mind.)
The facts in this district — where the Democratic incumbent has a similarly tenuous hold on a traditionally Republican district — are much like those in PA-17. From the US News and World Report:
Jensen criticized Schrier for voting to cut the Justice Department’s Byrne Criminal Justice Assistance Grant program, which gives money to state and local police, by $22 million, which he called a vote to “jeopardize community safety and make it easier for drug dealers, child and sex traffickers, and other criminals to break the law.” Schrier did vote for that cut, but also to significantly increase funding for other federal aid to state and local police, including for training under the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.