A stay-at-home mom is taking the blame for tweeting a link to a neo-Confederate website from a Colorado state senate candidate’s campaign account.
The woman was so distraught by the thought that she might have cost her candidate the election that she could barely even speak to a Denver Post reporter.
In May, Anna Jolly worked for Republican candidate Don Suppes, a conservative small-town mayor running for Colorado Senate district 5. From his official Twitter account, she linked to the site SuthenBoy.com with the comment “Interesting read.”
Indeed, but Jolly told the Post she didn’t actually read the site closely before tweeting about it. Suthunboy.com features a Confederate flag banner and the words “The Old South’s Gonna Rise Again” and is filled with conspiratorial blog posts disparaging blacks, women and gays. One post complains that white people can’t call blacks “thugs” or the N-word.
The tweet stayed on Suppes’ account for months before he removed it in September, initially claiming that his account had been hacked and that the breach had been reported to “appropriate authorities.”
The tweet made national news when Mother Jones picked it up, after which Suppes dropped the hacking explanation and said the tweet came from a staffer, whom he fired.
“The campaign Twitter account had been managed by a staffer who has since been terminated,” Suppes wrote in an email to Mother Jones. “No authorization was ever granted to comment on articles. I had never heard of Southernboy [sic] and only recently investigated the bizarre postings which were of great concern to me.”
The former staffer was unnamed until she spoke to the Denver Post to take the heat off Suppes.
“Anna Jolly could barely speak she was so distraught,” the Post reported, “saying she blames herself that Suppes, a Republican, is being called a racist and she fears she is going to cost him the election on Nov 4.”
Suppes said she was motivated to speak out when a Democratic mailer accused Suppes of “promot[ing] a white supremacist website.”
“He is not a racist; I’m Hispanic,” Jolly told the Post, which described her as “inconsolable.”
“I can’t apologize enough. It was just stupid. It was a stupid, stupid mistake.”
Suppes told the paper he wished Jolly hadn’t stepped forward, fearing that she will be targeted for attacks.
“It’s done,” he said. “The left is not going to change its campaign tactics. My concern is I’m the candidate. I signed up for this. She didn’t.”
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