A Virginia woman told TPM on Friday that she recently discovered a stack of anti-Hillary Clinton bumper stickers at a local GOP office, despite denials from the state party that it had anything to do with the stickers.
Carole Donoghue, a retired journalist, said she found the bumper stickers at Fairfax County Republican Committee headquarters in Fairfax, Va. The bumper stickers read “Monica Lewinsky’s X-Boyfriend’s Wife for President.” In small print, they included the words “Authorized By Republican Party Of Virginia.”
Donoghue talked to TPM hours after a spokesperson for Republican Party of Virginia denied the state party had anything to do with the anti-Hillary bumper stickers. The spokesperson told the Washington Post that the stickers were “an amateur effort” and the state party’s strategy “does not involve that.”
Donoghue’s discovery, however, raises questions about the denial.
Donoghue said she was out walking her dog on Sunday when she found an older man sitting on the pavement who looked like he “wasn’t doing well.” The man told her he was out campaigning for the Republican Party, and that he was diabetic and needed insulin, she said. Worried about the man’s condition, Donoghue drove him back to the county Republican Party headquarters.
It was there in the office, Donoghue said, where she found the Lewinsky bumper stickers.
“The man wanted to repay me for driving him, so I just took one of the stickers as a trophy,” she said. “There was a whole stack of them there.”
The existence of the bumper stickers was first reported Friday on Twitter by Reuters political correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti, who posted a photo of one of them.
Donoghue said she wanted to speak out about her discovery after the state party denied being involved.
“They are just cheap and stupid, and if you are going to be cheap and stupid at least be honest about it,” Donoghue told TPM. “The denial was dishonest.”
A woman who answered the phone Friday afternoon at Fairfax County Republican Party headquarters told TPM she hadn’t been in the office on Sunday and didn’t know who was. She said she didn’t know whether the bumper stickers had been there that day, but she said none were there now. She declined to give her name.
“We have a lot of bumper stickers,” the woman said. “We don’t have any of those bumper stickers though.”
TPM left a voicemail and sent an email to a spokesperson for the Republican Party of Virginia on Friday afternoon, seeking comment. The messages were not immediately returned.
Photo by Gabriel Debenedetti.
