U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz’s primary challenger continues to show that he thinks his hope of toppling the Republican incumbent lies with aligning with activists on the left.
As The Free Press reported last month, Mark Lombardo, a former FedEx executive seeking to unseat Gaetz, has hired as a media adviser an inside-the-Beltway Republican consultant with ties to the disgraced anti-Trump Lincoln Project.
Now it appears Lombardo is using another supposed GOP campaign consultant with connections to liberal activists to manage his social media.
Lombardo’s Facebook page is overseen by a firm called AdVictory. AdVictory’s founding partner and president is Adam Meldrum.
Meldrum sits on the board of directors of a group HeadCount, whose stated mission, according to its website, is to utilize “the power of music to register voters and promote participation in democracy.”
It does that by conducting voter-registration drives at music events. Some of those, according to HeadCount, include Pride Festivals and RuPaul’s DragCon, an event for drag queens.
In an interview last month, RuPaul declared that efforts to ban children from highly sexualized drag queen shows, as are occurring in Florida, Texas, and Arizona, were a “diversion” from gun crime. “Drag queens ain’t hurting nobody,” RuPaul told CBS host James Corden.
HeadCount also notes that it worked with famous liberals in the entertainment industry such as Beyoncé & Jay Z, John Legend, and Stephen Colbert. It’s also done work for the leftists at Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, who are well known for being anti-Israel.
Moreover, Lombardo’s key social media adviser leads a group that on its website notes its voter drives include initiatives such as: “Vote with Pride,” which conducts outreach to LGBTQ voters and provides trans voters “support in obtaining the correct ID”; the Cannabis Voter Project, which advocates for the legalization of marijuana; and March for Our Lives, the anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment group.
HeadCount claims it’s “nonpartisan.” But you won’t see much conservative traffic on its social media presence.
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Away from its seeming apolitical advocacy for voting generally, you get messages on its Twitter feed such as “Science says everyone’s a little bit racist (and sexist and homophobic), so what can we do about it?”
In another example, HeadCount tweeted a quote from Beyoncé, who said, “I’m encouraging you to continue to take action, continue to change and dismantle a racist and unequal system. There are people banking on us staying at home during local elections… We have to vote like our life depends on it, because it does.”
After former President Donald Trump nominated his first Supreme Court nominee, it tweeted a graphic with the phrase “Stay Woke.”
In another instance, HeadCount tweeted, “How widespread is voter fraud? (Hint: It’s just not.)” Yet rarely does a week go by without a case of such fraud being highlighted somewhere.
Moreover, the group also has tweeted, “Voter fraud may be real, but voter ID fraud pretty much isn’t. The problem with voter ID laws.” That tweet linked to a Vox article that suggested election-integrity laws focusing on voter ID issues seek to “fix a false problem.”
In another instance from 2021, HeadCount noted, “Ever wonder if your vote impacts the community? Check out pending state legislation that directly impacts trans youth in 29 states across the country. Pay attention and never miss a chance to vote.”
Lastly, the supposed nonpartisan HeadCount referred to President Trump as an “immigrant-bashing carnival barker.”
And allies of this group, as well as the Democratic-supporting gurus as the Lincoln Project, are who Mark Lombardo is leaning on to oust Rep. Gaetz.
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