Bill Randall is a candidate for Congress, running in North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District. Mr. Randall also happens to be an African-American. In early October, Randall had a campaign billboard vandalized with a spray-painted, vulgar phallic symbol, accompanied by the letters "KKK”. It was the kind of message that would normally launch the media into full-blown racial apoplexy.
One small problem. Bill Randall is a Tea Party Conservative Republican.
Despite filing a report with the Wake County Sheriff’s Department on October 9, holding a press conference regarding the incident, issuing a press release, and having a local news report linked at the Breitbart.tv website, nobody in major media outlets in Raleigh have covered the story.
Randall specifically called out the Raleigh News & Observer, saying that a press release of the incident was sent to their offices, but that “they apparently had no interest in covering the story.”
He believes this is a clear case of liberal media bias, stating that, “all of their coverage of me has been slanted, negatively biased, or altogether false.”
An e-mail to the News Observer received no response, but the publication does have a history of reporting politically motivated vandalism. In November of 2007, they reported on lawn signs placed by the Democratic Party which were either stolen or vandalized. In 2010, they ran a New York Times article in which vandalism of Gabby Gifford’s office was addressed. And just ten days after Randall’s billboard was vandalized, the News Observer ran multiple reports involving messages being spray-painted on the door and glass-encased billboard of N.C. State University's GLBT Center, one in which the act was described as ‘hate bias’.
But KKK on the billboard of a black conservative warrants no coverage?
Randall explains why he deserves respect, “I served honorably in the U.S. military for 27 years, and am willing to serve our nation once again in the U.S. Congress.”
He added, “I am not asking for favoritism, but I do ask for fair and equitable coverage of a horrible, disgraceful action that not only insulted me, but also the more than 92,000 constituents who cast their vote for me last Fall in the NC-13th Congressional District.”
E-mail Rusty at weiss.rusty@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter @rustyweiss74
