A West Texas congressional candidate continues to struggle with complications stemming from his having misrepresented himself as a staunch anti-gay agenda candidate before revelations surfaced of his prior promotion and participation in gay rights activism. The hopeful, Colonel Michael Bob Starr, had to pause from his talking points after Breitbart Texas reported on recent gay pride “fun runs” the colonel had promoted and participated in while wearing gay pride t-shirts.
Many of the colonel’s issues do not stem from his participation in gay rights activism, but rather from having misrepresented himself to West Texans and from his response to the revelations.
Breitbart Texas reached out to the colonel’s campaign for comment on Saturday, February 13, regarding statements made by one of his opponents in the race, Jason Corley, and on images of the colonel wearing gay pride clothing in gay “fun runs.” After a back and forth and no answer for over three hours, this outlet published an article identifying the past gay rights activism of the self-proclaimed staunch anti-gay agenda candidate. The Starr campaign never gave comment.
Early the following Monday morning, the Starr campaign went on an immediate and swift media blitz complete with two press conferences. Starr insisted that he had not been contacted by Breitbart Texas first and that any criticism of his seeming hypocrisy was “an attack on the troops,” as the gay pride events had occurred on a military base. He insisted that the “attacks” were “attacks on the base” and “well-funded, outside cowards” were behind “the attack.”
Unfortunately for Starr, this reporter actually lives in the city of Lubbock where he held his first damage-control press conference. After this reporter confronted Starr at the press conference about his claims of being attacked, the colonel immediately backed down and insisted that he wasn’t referring to this reporter–even though the only article written about the matter at the time was written by this reporter.
Starr then found himself enduring days of media interviews largely focused on his hypocrisy and false claims of a well-funded, shadowy conspiracy of outsiders being out to get him and on his efforts to claim criticisms of his previous leadership choices were somehow an “attack” on the troops.
The Starr campaign is operating in one of America’s most conservative districts and it didn’t help Starr when far left-of-center gay rights groups began rallying around him and defending him. The groups, seemingly unaware that Starr had only days prior stood at podiums and vowed to fight the gay agenda, ran to his defense instinctively without any critical thought given to the hypocrisy they were defending.
Breitbart Texas published another article about Starr that focused on the far left gay rights groups rallying around him. Within 15 minutes of publication, the Starr campaign cancelled all scheduled media appearances and put out a press release asserting that the colonel was heading to the hospital with “severe abdominal pain.” The campaign then announced that the colonel would be taking a few days off the campaign trail.
The desperation led to his supporters beginning to lob personal attacks against this reporter, as though the facts were somehow changed by smearing the message bearer. In addition to the indirect personal attacks lobbed at this reporter from the colonel, attacks which he later claimed weren’t directed as such, one of his apparent surrogates, himself a former candidate-turned Starr supporter, began claiming that this reporter was a “hired” smear merchant. That failed candidate, Don Parrish, began using social media to push out a far left communist Mother Jones article that attacked this reporter for having previously worked with the FBI to stop terrorism against Republican delegates at the 2008 Republican National Convention.
Starr, realizing that his apparent hypocrisy and lack of forthcoming disclosure to West Texans was hurting him, then began a Facebook campaign insisting that any discussion of his factual history was an “attack.” After hours of existence, the campaign still had less than 100 supporters, however, some of the comments show that Starr’s effort to avoid facing consequences for his own behavior are seeing some success. Starr was able to jump behind some of the men and women in uniform and get them to believe that they were under attack because Starr was asked to answer for seeming hypocrisy on a hotbed issue.
The candidate is finding that his misrepresentation of himself to West Texans, his having attacked a media outlet for doing their job and being critical enough to question his chosen narrative, and his having made wild unsubstantiated claims about a news report he didn’t like being part of a grand conspiracy, are all things that don’t sit well with West Texans.
Follow Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby on Twitter: @brandondarby
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