A former Democratic candidate for mayor in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania is suing the local Republican Party after it insisted that she is a fugitive from the law.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Monday that the false attack on failed mayoral candidate Joy Fox (D) was carried out in mailers, on a website and on Facebook.
According to Fox, Chester Heights Republicans confused her with Joyce M. Watkins, a woman who was accused of passing worthless checks in Durham, NC in 1997.
“It is not her. She has a traffic ticket. Zero arrests,” Fox’s attorney, Bryan Lentz told the Inquirer.
For their part, Chester Heights Republicans defended the smear, noting that the information had been verified on the internet.
“No lies here. Facts backed up with data certified by the state that brought the charges and by multiple agencies cross referenced repeatedly," a person running the Chester Heights Republicans Facebook page told Fox in a Facebook message.
Republican councilwoman Ginamarie Ellis also defended the false claim in a Facebook message.
“Our post is based on SIX background check reporting agencies. The voters can decide what to believe,” she wrote, according to a screen shot shared with the paper.
Although Fox has produced a copy of her birth certificate, Republicans have been unwilling to back down. However, the Facebook posts and the website containing the false information have been scrubbed.
“I guess it was a little bit of a desperation thing,” Lentz explained. “It’s like, if you looked up ‘knowing falsehood’ in the dictionary, they’d put a picture of this case.”
Fox named six Chester Heights Republicans, including Ellis, in her lawsuit. Fox's attorney said that Republicans have been unwilling to reveal who funded the mailers and website.
