Friday, October 5, 2007

Poston/Evers merge in cyberspace

Familiar faces are squaring off again in the Bradenton mayoral race: incumbent Wayne Poston and his predecessor, Bill Evers. This campaign, though, is taking a new dimension of online shenanigans.

Reporter Melanie Marquez got a tip late Thursday that all wasn’t what it appeared online. Take your browser to wayneposton.com, and up pops Evers’ campaign site. All parties claim ignorance of the crossed lines, but as of this posting, it still wasn’t fixed.

Poston does have a valid campaign site (Melanie missed that one in print; her online story includes that now) at postonformayor.com –- and the gloves are off there, too. Bill Evers’ “legacy” is little more than eroding infrastructure through the incumbent’s website. And Evers’ site has a gritty side-by-side comparison of what he accomplished, vs. Poston’s efforts. (In case you missed Melanie's story,here’s a link:)

Ah, politics. But since Evers' site solicits contributions, there may be more to this story. One attorney told Melanie that while the redirection from the wayneposton.com site to Evers' site might not fall under First Amendment rights, the solicitation portion might have commercial value. Stay tuned.

And check out Bradenton.com this afternoon, for the latest after these candidates square off at noon at the Bradenton Country Club.

Joan

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure why you say "all parties claim ignorance" when evers is the only one claiming ignorance.It always seems to work well for him.

Anonymous said...

Are you going to make a correction about Postons website in the newspaper? Not everyone reads on-line?

Anonymous said...

Note: the correction ran on Page 2A today (Saturday) with the correct website.

Anonymous said...

This reminds The Master of old-time Forida politics.
There was the time George Smathers campaigned against the esteemed Claude Pepper for a U.S. Senate seat in 1950 with a speech that tried to paint Pepper as an out-of-control liberal.

(Smathers claimed he never made the speech, but what do you expect from a Florida Gator?)

Among the lines purportedly delivered by Smathers:

"Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York.

Also:
"Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy."

Anonymous said...

Poston is the developer's dream and the residents' nightmare.

Evers is too old and grumpy for this job. (I know this personally)

When are we going to see EXPERIENCED fresh blood run for an office as important as this?

Shame, we have little to choose from here.