A local book seller is donating proceeds to an immigration charity after lobbyists tried to goose sales of Sen. David McCormick's (R-PA) book, the local Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia website, The Washingtonian, reported.
People’s Book in Takoma Park, Maryland, is donating $7,000 from its book sales to CASA in Maryland, which advocates for immigrants.
“Senator McCormick’s lobbyists asked us to buy 500 copies of his recently published book,” said store co-owner Matt Bormet, in a press release. “While we don’t want to be in business with someone who is partially responsible for the current crisis, we also don’t support banning books. So we filled the request. But in order to live our values, we’re taking his money and giving it to folks who can do some good with it.”
Lobbyists Marty Obst and Jeff Miller were the ones who requested that the book be purchased, the store said. Both men have decades of experience in GOP politics, their website biographies say.
Bomet explained that buying up multiple copies of a book is “a common tactic amongst these types to goose their sales numbers."
The national Republican Party made a similar effort in 2019 and 2020, which spent $405,404 to Books-a-Million, Porchlight Books and Barnes and Noble to buy "donor momentos," the report said at the time. Those moments, however, were books by Donald Trump Jr. and Fox host Sean Hannity.
The spending got Don Jr.'s book on the national best-seller lists.
People’s Book attacked McCormick as “a human rubber stamp for the Trump agenda” and said that he should purchase more books from their shop "so we can give more of his massive piles of wealth to other worthy causes.”