Leesburg Votes and Tom Dunn

Leesburg Votes is an organization whose goal is to "increase the number of voters taking part in town elections." It is wholly conceived of, and run by, a candidate in those elections, Tom Dunn. For an organization claiming to be politically neutral in Town Elections to be conceived of and run by a candidate in those elections is a pretty striking conflict of interest.

And it gets more interesting the deeper you go into their site.

For example, the link to Dave Butler's campaign announcement on the Leesburg Votes site takes you to a Leesburg Today article on that announcement. However, it takes you to a version of that article which only contains one comment from readers - a negative comment about Mr. Butler. However, when you access the campaign announcement article directly from the Leesburg Today site, you discover that there are actually nine comments on the article. And it's not too difficult to provide the correct link, Leesburg Tomorrow did it here, for example. It's interesting that all the other candidate links (and all the other candidates for Council are Republicans) link to the version of the article with the full comments. An organization concerned about its reputation for neutrality would certainly make it a point to be careful with its links.

Recently, Leesburg Votes dropped off post cards around town advocating voting in the May 6th elections. On these cards, residents were encouraged to call Tom Dunn directly. Is it reasonable to expect Mr. Dunn not to take an opportunity on these calls to advocate his own election? Is it reasonable for Leesburg Votes to be considered an organization separate from Mr. Dunn's campaign if he does so?

Leesburg Votes was started with good intentions, but in retaining his management of Leesburg Votes after announcing his candidacy, and effectively using this theoretically neutral organization to unofficially promote his own candidacy, Tom Dunn has engaged in an activity that at best misleads, at worst deceives, the voters of Leesburg. Indeed, by turning a voter-turnout organization into a candidate-promotion organization, he may have reduced the faith the voters of Leesburg have in the honesty of real voter advocacy organizations, and thus inhibited Leesburg Votes' stated goal.

It is unclear whether Leesburg Votes has received any donations from citizens or third parties in the furtherance of its stated goals. If it did receive contributions, it will be interesting to know whether Mr. Dunn intends to return them, or if not, to notify those contributors that Leesburg Votes is soliciting voters to contact himself, a candidate for office, directly.

Ultimately, Mr. Dunn's use of Leesburg Votes to de facto promote his own candidacy ("Vote for me, I'm in favor of voting!") demonstrates a Nixonian parsing of political and campaign ethics. The Town of Leesburg can do much better for Council than someone who uses front groups to fight a small town election.