The Kim Campaign Plays Loose With The Governor

Below are two images. One is from the office of the Governor announcing a visit to get out the vote and support the local Democratic candidates. The other is from an advertisement from the Ron Kim campaign regarding the event. An innocent person might construe from the advertisement that Mr. Kim has been endorsed by our Governor, Kathy Hochul. Such a person would be wrong.

In fact Governor Hochul had explicitly announced to the press that she would not be endorsing any local candidates. This stems from the fact that India Walton, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America defeated the Democratic incumbent Byron Brown in the Buffalo Democratic mayoral primary. Governor Hochul apparently privately supports Brown who is running as a write-in candidate. In order to avoid endorsing Walton she chose to officially eschew endorsing any local candidates statewide.

This is a link to an article regarding the governor’s stand.

In Mr. Kim’s advertisement he and the Governor appear to be standing together and the announcement explicitly states that she is coming to Saratoga to support him along with the other candidates. I do not think it unfair to observe that this gives the impression that she is endorsing Mr. Kim.

Below it is what the governor’s office actually issued. Someone has doctored the original document.

My sources tell me that the Governor learned of this and she was not amused.

I grant that the original states that she is coming to “support” the local candidates and does not use the word endorsement but given the Governor’s strong position that she is not endorsing candidates, this doctored image strikes me as misleading. Others may see it as lawyerly true. I leave it for my readers to decide.

I attempted to find out from Mr. Kim and Saratoga Springs Democratic Committee Chair Pat Tuz who doctored the image. Neither responded.

Ron Kim’s Advertisement

The Governor’s Announcement

6 thoughts on “The Kim Campaign Plays Loose With The Governor”

  1. Wow! I am too naive to understand how/why candidates use such mendacious claims in an attempt to further their careers. Having lived by the mantra: “Speak the truth and sleep in the streets,” as taught to me by my late wife who grew up homeless in LA, and then finding that living under such a simple and pure and truthful directive has made my life so rich and free, I grieve for Ron Kim, as he knows not what he has missed. He certainly is not qualified to lead others.

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    1. Tell that to Trump and his sycophantic fellow travelers.

      “Speak the truth and sleep in the streets?” Yeah, I’d love to hear that Elise Stefanik is now living in a cardboard box over a subway grate. I’m not a fan of Kim or Dems in general, but that poster is piffle compared to the GOP’s lies and fabrications at all levels, including their hijacking of the local Working Families Party.

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  3. Was this something he sent to his supporters (like through his own social media channels), or was this a broader advertisement?
    Either way, I’m a bit confused as to what the issue is. The Governor’s release says she’s coming to Saratoga Springs for an event with the county and city committees in support of Democratic candidates in the country. Ron is the committee endorsed candidate, no? So by the language of the Governor’s own announcement, she’s coming to support him and other local Democrats. His advertisement doesn’t say “hosted by” or “endorsed by,” which definitely would have been more troubling language. I agree that doctoring the image without their knowledge is a bad look, but while “support” and “endorse” don’t mean exactly the same thing, they’re definitionally synonyms.

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      1. Thanks John. Maybe it would have been more appropriate as something to send to supporters, but even the language on the ad says that the Governor is coming “to support Ron Kim and other candidates,” which is in line with what her original announcement says. I’m not an avid Kim supporter, but I’m unsure why others here see it as “mendacious” or “endemic” of the candidate. It reads as if people who didn’t like him in the first place, perhaps for viable reasons, are looking to make an issue out of something fairly trivial.

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