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Hahn Files FEC Complaint Against Video Depicting Her as a Gangster-Friendly Stripper
Republican businessman Craig Huey may not stand a chance against Democratic nominee Janice Hahn in the upcoming election to fill the Congressional seat vacated by Jane Harman. But that's not stopping one conservative PAC from bringing attention to the fact that there is an alternative to the heavily favored Hahn in the Democratic-leaning 36th District.
The video is quite silly in spite of its intent and serves as a great case study for just how ridiculous a 90 second YouTube video can be and still serve to spark a controversy worthy of international headlines. But not everyone thinks it's funny, including the Atlantic and Slate's David Weigel.
"Give us your cash b--ch," featuring rappers AK-47s, has been viewed over 500,000 times since first being posted on Monday by Turn Right USA, an expenditure-only Political Action Committee (SuperPAC) with a totally awesome Hello World Wordpress-based website. The video was posted to a site owned by the PAC called Hahn's Homeboyz.
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By Friday morning it had led to Hahn's filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) claiming that Turn Right is connected to the Huey campaign. The L.A. Times reports:
Her complaint notes that a one-time volunteer for Huey, G. Rick Marshall, is a principal working for Turn Right, a so-called “Super PAC” that can raise unlimited funds from donors whose identities remain private.
The video distinguishes itself from the campaign with a disclaimer. Huey distanced himself on Wednesday by denouncing the video, calling it "racist and sexist" according to Politico. But in a statement released Thursday, Huey claimed that the Hahn campaign was exploiting the video for its own benefit. Which would be smart, although we're not sure whether Democrats are actually capable of such double-reverse controversy hijinks.Huey managed to practically come from out of nowhere to win 22 percent of the vote in the May primary, knocking off former Secretary of State Debra Bowen for the second-place spot and securing a run-off against Hahn, who won 24 percent of the vote. And now that even the WSJ is looking for a possible surprise win by Huey, Hahn's campaign needs to harness all possible tools and turn this controversy around to get her constituents out to vote and vote for her.
The 36th District covers L.A.'s beach cities from Mar Vista to San Pedro. The Hahn - Huey runoff is July 12th.
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