We have to give the dubious distinction of most deceptive advertising during the 2024 campaign season to Alamance County’s Democratic Party for a series of billboards that took aim at five local Republican officeholders.
In each, the theme of the billboard was “Make Alamance Moldy Again; vote Republican.” The mold reference was an apparent allusion to widespread mold found in ABSS schools last year just before the start of the school year.
County commissioners ultimately authorized $27.2 million for mold remediation in 32 schools and the ABSS central office.
The targets of the Democratic invective were, variously: state representatives Dennis Riddell and Steve Ross; county commissioner candidates John Paisley, Jr. and Ed Priola; and state senator Amy Galey.
Like several other ostensibly humorous billboard messages, they all ended with the tagline “Vote Republican.”
For busy motorists passing by, we doubt many got what we assume was the attempt at some form of irony or humor; many probably thought these were just pro-Republican messages, not targeted at the Republican candidates whose names and images appeared on them.
Among other puzzlements about the billboard messages is that Priola wasn’t even an elected official last year when the mold problems surfaced; but we guess he had the disadvantage of being a Republican on this year’s ballot. So he became fair game in the world of partisan sniping.
Sen. Galey had absolutely nothing to do with the mold problem, as far as we could tell; her only involvement, of which we’re aware, was to ask an investigative arm of the legislature to audit ABSS in the aftermath of the mold outbreak and financial irregularities that surfaced about the same time.
And we’re not at all sure what the relevance of Riddell and Ross was, except, again, they happened to be Republican candidates on the ballot this year, facing Democratic opponents. (We would also urge that the party might want to hire some proofreaders for its next foray into an anti-Republican billboard campaign; Riddell’s name is misspelled with one “d,” as Ridell.)
But the billboards offered absolutely no indictment, criticism, or even reference to the underlying source of the mold problem: i.e., the school system itself.
But, again, we guess all’s fair game in partisan politics.
But in addition to being the most deceptive in their billboard campaign, the county’s Democratic Party also takes the record for the least effective advertising: all five of the Republicans targeted in their billboard campaign won re-election (Galey, Paisley, Riddell, & Ross) or election (Priola).
