Patterico's Pontifications

10/24/2012

Jim Moran’s Son Resigns After Project Veritas Video Release

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:24 pm



The Hill:

Patrick Moran, the son of Virginia Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and the field director for his father’s reelection bid, resigned abruptly Wednesday after a video linked him to voter fraud.

The video — released earlier in the day by Project Veritas, a conservative organization headed by the Republican activist James O’Keefe — revealed that the younger Moran had weighed options for helping an undercover operative cast votes on behalf of 100 people who allegedly weren’t planning to vote.

“There will be a lot of voter protection, so, if they just have, you know, the utility bill or bank statement — bank statement would obviously be tough … but faking a utility bill would be easy enough,” Moran says, apparently referring to options for getting around Virginia’s voter ID laws.

The video is here:

The L.A. Times says: nothing to see here.

32 Responses to “Jim Moran’s Son Resigns After Project Veritas Video Release”

  1. Ding.

    Patterico (8b3905)

  2. Yeah. TPM commenters say O’Keefe prolly just made it all up and O’Keefe lies and edits his film– and Junior’s dad’s campaign apologized and Junior resigned because well–because.

    elissa (381c32)

  3. Isolated incident

    JD (8a1df4)

  4. Drudge has a voter supression effort in Florida headlined too.

    elissa (381c32)

  5. Huh, that’s interesting. I can’t wait to hear more. Wish I had more faith in PV…

    time123 (873f99)

  6. There ain’t no voter fraud! Can’t win at the ballot box so they cheat or try to force their will on their fellow Americans through the courts.

    Colonel Haiku (85b4a3)

  7. Also, almost as shocking- a big fashion faux pas here. Patrick Moran is wearing a scarf without a blazer. Ugh.

    elissa (381c32)

  8. Yeah, I thought that was kind of gay, too. Shame, big manly-looking boy like that.

    nk (875f57)

  9. nk–well he might have dressed better that day had he known he’d be famous and be seen nationally on film.

    elissa (381c32)

  10. What?!? Patrick Moraz has resigned?! I didn’t even know he was in politics, I thought he was a prog-rock keyboardist!

    (pause)

    Ohhhh… you mean Patrick MoraN.

    Never mind.

    Gojira, King of Monsters (5a9950)

  11. nk, I don’t know … he looks like a momma’s boy to me.

    SPQR (768505)

  12. A small begrudging nod to O’Keefe at Salon “O’Keefe Does Something Right” …only after making it very clear O’Keefe is anything but reliable, professional, or whatever. It’s dripping with stunning arrogance, but the nod is more than I would expect.

    Dana (292dcf)

  13. Sleazy Jim Moran has a sleazy son?

    Never expected that!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  14. The LAT once again demonstrates why they are such a popular newspaper.

    PatAZ (67927c)

  15. Here is a tough statement from Col. Patrick Murray (Congressman Moran’s Republican opponent in Virginia):

    Alexandria, VA – In light of breaking news and the release of a video showing Pat Moran, son and campaign staffer of Congressman Jim Moran, apparently instructing a person on how to commit voter fraud in Virginia, Moran’s opponent in the 8th Congressional District, Colonel Patrick Murray issued the following comment:

    After seeing this video on several news sites, I am very concerned about the campaign activities of my opponent. While it is not clear whether or not there was any wrongdoing, I hope that local, state and federal election officials will look into this matter immediately.
    The integrity of our nation is at stake, and it appears that my opponent’s campaign seems prepared to undermine free and fair elections right here in Virginia.
    Sadly, anyone who is familiar with Jim Moran will not be surprised by this. The truth is that Moran has a long track record of hyper partisan behavior, racially charged comments and an infamous anger management problem. So this is more of the same embarrassing behavior that we’ve come to expect from Jim Moran and his campaign.

    Does anyone from Virginia who comments here know how much play this scandal is receving in VA and have any insight on whether it will affect the race?

    elissa (381c32)

  16. But if a Republican did the same thing…father and son would be resigning? Very impressive work by O’Keefe!

    PolitixFireball (6b5abe)

  17. Sleazy Jim Moran has a sleazy son?

    Not only that, but apparently a harridan of a daughter too.

    And check out the dude who appears at the very end of the clip I liked to above and admonishes Col. Murray to “have some self-respect” and “appreciate the office.” Yep, the sleazebag son of the disgraceful congressman.

    JVW (f5695c)

  18. Are you sure they got his last name right ? He sure acts like his last name should have two Os …

    Alasdair (2cd241)

  19. How come when a politician or his staff or family break the law it is always just an “error in judgement”?

    Bruce Majors, Libertarian for Congress (aeb1a9)

  20. Voter fraud should be a Capital crime, equivalent to Treason.

    Joe Miller (00407a)

  21. Elissa – Moran’s anti-joooooooooo hatred is legend.

    Why is it that Dem’s just have some staffer resign, and then they claim it has been resolved?

    JD (8a1df4)

  22. Why is it that Dem’s just have some staffer resign, and then they claim it has been resolved?

    Because they can.

    Rob Crawford (c55962)

  23. This is sort of off-topic, but still related – I’m so sick of the same idiotic line popping up in every single voting fraud story about how poor, elderly, young, disabled, minority people don’t have IDs. Who the hell ARE these people??? Who doesn’t have any kind of ID whatsoever? Look, I’m not too high and mighty to admit that at one point, when both my wife and I were out of work with an infant to feed, we used WIC. Guess what? You had to show ID to sign up for it. All those poor minority young disabled people managed to scrape up some ID to sign up for benefits, but not to vote? I want some numbers instead of the same bullshit sentence. How many people don’t have IDs? What percentage of the population? WHY don’t they have ID?

    radar (3a664a)

  24. To keep it all in the family, Jim’s brother Brian, is Chairman of the VA Democrat Campaign Committee.

    PatAZ (eb5b56)

  25. What?!? Patrick Moraz has resigned?! I didn’t even know he was in politics, I thought he was a prog-rock keyboardist!

    — Saw him playing with The Moody Blues in ’81. That was the only concert where I was in the front row. Ah, memories . . .

    Icy (95da7f)

  26. Does anyone from Virginia who comments here know how much play this scandal is receving in VA and have any insight on whether it will affect the race?
    Comment by elissa — 10/24/2012 @ 8:57 pm

    Great question. It would be great if it provoked a statewide peak in anti-Democrat sentiment and helped with the presidential and Senate races.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  27. It would be great if it provoked a statewide peak in anti-Democrat sentiment and helped with the presidential and Senate races

    Doc, it would also be great if Obama were to suddenly start governing by strict Libertarian principles and dismantle much of the federal government. But both your scenario and mine have little chance of coming true.

    Chuck Bartowski (11fb31)

  28. Congressman Moran and Congressman Moran’s moron son are not out of the woods by a long shot. This will keep it in the news and public eye for a while. Col. Murray might even get a nice political ad or two out of this. From the Hill:

    Less than 24 hours after the video’s release, Arlington County investigators announced that they’re looking into the matter.

    “The Arlington County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office and the Arlington County Police Department have been made aware of a video released yesterday allegedly depicting Patrick Moran, former Director of Field Operations for the Jim Moran for Congress campaign organization, assisting another to vote illegally,” police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck said Thursday afternoon in a statement.

    “The Arlington County Police Department has initiated a criminal investigation of this matter.”

    elissa (274efd)

  29. This doesn’t really exist.

    He’s telling him there’ a better way to help..

    What this shows you, however, is how unethical Pat Moran is willing to be

    This guy claims hes found 100 inactive voters.

    Pat Moran tells him he would call these people up and make sure they are not going to vote by themselves.

    Now any fool would know the things to do would be to request an absentee ballot. That would be of people he knows.

    You can see here how unusual this idea is.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  30. This doesn’t really exist.

    Vintage Sammy

    JD (8a1df4)

  31. Faking utility bills? You can fake someone living at an address. People do that to get children into schools they want.

    Now here they are supposed to be real registered voters, with real addresses, not connected with the campaign (so they can mailed absentee ballots, and then fill them out, which would be the easiest thing to do)

    It’s just a bunch of people who never vote that somebody has supposedly discovered. IN REAL LIFE NOBODY WOULD DISCOVER THEM.

    Dead people or people who moved away, maybe yes, but not real live people whom you could be 99% certain wouldn’t vote in a closely contested Presidential election where ads fill the airwaves.

    As for utility bills, well…

    electionlineWeekly September 13, 2012

    Wisconsin residents no longer need to show papers

    State accepts electronic documents for same-day registration

    While many elections officials across the country are concerned about the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to stay afloat because of the impact it may have on vote-by-mail and absentee voting, elections officials in Wisconsin are faced with another dilemma from the slow death of the mail.

    No one mails anything anymore — including identifying documents like utility bills.

    Faced with a growing number of people who receive and pay their bills exclusively online, recently, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board ruled that residents wishing to register to vote at the polls on election day may provide a poll worker with an electronic proof-of-residency via their smartphone…

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  32. SF: This doesn’t really exist.

    Comment by JD — 10/25/2012 @ 4:37 pm

    Vintage Sammy

    Yes. And it doesn’t.

    This is not the way for anyone to commit election fraud. Without consulting those voters? Without checking if they are dead or moved away?

    Fraud is committed by using absentee ballots. If not,m by poll workers doing something. Not by somebody actually showing up at the polls.

    Theer was one example in brooklyn. And the key to taht was:

    1) They didn’t control the election machinery

    2. New York had very little absentee voting

    3. There was no organized political competition in the area.

    There was also a case in Israel in 1999 where they did have in person fraud, with IDs.

    Key to that was:

    1. Because of proportional representation only a small number of votes were needed.

    2. This was religious party — and people trusted them with their iDs but the party didn’t trust its beneficiaries to vote.

    3. There was only one piece of suitable ID so that if turned over there was no risk the voter would try to vote on his own.

    4. Israel has no absentnee voting so again there was no risk the voter would vote on his own.

    5. They then gatherd a couple of dozen people matched them up with the IDs and made sure they remembered the national IS number.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)


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