Lee Whitnum's Campaign Website: Sloppy, Unprofessional

Lee Whitnum just got on the ballot to challenge Jim Himes in the Democratic primary Aug. 12. In my post "Juicy Political Gossip! Local Candidate Lee Whitnum Doesn't Understand That Internet Leaves a Record, Doesn't Like Immigrants", I made sure you know that she has been far too chatty on the internet and has left a trail of foolish comments. Her campaign website, which should be a professional, mature piece of work, only adds to the impression that she is slipshod and reckless.

Whitnum’s current campaign website is a study in strangeness. There are typos, grammar errors, and bizarre statements. (I have highlighted them in red.) I don’t feel like looking at her whole site right now, because she tires me out with her obnoxiously worded writing. I’ll focus on her intro page and illegal immigration page for now.

Let’s look at the obvious stuff first: typos and ‘sounds-like-your-racist-grandpa’ rhetoric. From Lee Whitnum 2008:

Illegal immigrants must apply for a tax payer identification, and a background check to ensure we are not harbouring fugitives. Many illegals make more hourly than many Americans (waitresses, retail employees, teaching assistants and substitute teachers) but the Americans have to pay taxes. Everyone need to contribute.

We need immigrants but, there has to be limits and respect for the law. Also, society pays in other ways:

Whitnum then lists 14 statements about immigration that include statistics. At the end of the statements, there is an asterisk with “The aforementioned 14 have not been verified.”

Well, then, why are they on her site? Is there any other explanation other than straight-up craziness? Or is she just a really terrible researcher? If she’s too busy to locate verifiable facts for her website, she shouldn’t write anything. Sometimes it's good just to be quiet.

I like 10 and 14, which are followed by a 4th grade level misspelling.

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's
two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US.

Doesn’t that translate to “Watch out for darker-skinned people who don’t speak English”? As best I can tell, that fact comes from a transcript of a Lou Dobbs show. Robert Rector, a research fellow at conservative thinktank Heritage Foundation, said on the show, "I'll say another thing that can't be said here, which is the fact that Hispanics in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-Hispanics, and it seems very clear that if you basically bring in a lot of low-skilled Hispanics with dysfunctional family structure from the Central America, that both they and, in particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the United States. The data is very clear on that. But it can't be discussed. We can't really also discuss the fact that, my goodness, if you're bringing in high school dropouts who aren't married and have children out of wedlock, what are they going to do? They're going to be on welfare."

Pretty interesting to see where Whitnum pulls her research, huh?

14. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex
Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants in The United States ".

Why is that in quotes? Oh, I see, it’s an article. I googled the title to find it. LW’s site seems like a rushed, unprofessional job; why else wouldn’t a computer science major provide a link to an article? The author of the article is a criminal profiler. The one million figure is an estimate based on the 1500 cases she studied of violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants. That author is also quoted in an article called "Illegal aliens linked to gang-rape wave: The crime epidemic no one will talk about?"

Total cost is a whooping... $338.3 BILLION A YEAR!!!

(Double o makes a long o sound: “oooooh.” She means whopping, as in big, not "whooping," as in screaming.)


Second, Whitnum’s statements about herself are awkward. On the intro page she proclaims herself as:
“-Teacher
-Cancer survivor
-Single woman.”
Is this a Match.com profile or Congressional candidate?


Third, further down the page, she writes in bold font, “I am the average American woman.”
If so, this is a good reason not to have her in Congress. I’d like someone at least a little above average to be running this country. However, I don’t think the average American woman acts this oddly. Maybe she writes this badly, but if so, she has the sense to have someone proofread her website. No, I don’t think Lee is average.


Fourth, there are more typos on the intro page. One of her positions:

Take a hard stand on illegal immigration. Enforce existing laws.
Danbury recently passes the Immigration and Custom's Enforcement (ICE).

There’s no apostrophe in Customs. And did she mean Danbury passed it, not "passes" it? I have typos in this blog sometimes, but I work alone. Is she doing this all by herself or does she have a bad copy editor? Or does she get emotional when typing about immigrants? Most typos seem to be in paragraphs about immigrants. There’s only one on her health care page, and it’s a common one:
Governor Rell has threatened to veto the bill in it's current state.

It’s is short for it is; the possessive is an exception and takes no apostrophe.


It’s exhausting dealing with this; maybe that’s one of Whitnum’s strategies: to wear people down. I’m going to bed.

By the way, Whitnum also has a problem with legal immigrants. From a Stamford Times article: Whitnum speaks of repealing laws that allow legal immigrants to come to America for work. A former software engineer for the U.S. Army, Whitnum lost her job after lawmakers passed a law granting more work visas.

Mmm-hmm. I’m sure that’s why she lost her job. It’s those damn foreigners!