Marvin Scott Campaign Incites Controversy, Continues to Evade Responsibility

Marvin Scott is the Republican nominee for the 7th Congressional District of Indiana. He beat the slated candidate, Carlos May, during the primary. But even at that time, he was facing controversy within his own party, and things have not improved.

Brian Jessen of Indiana's Conservative Hardball reported that his comments were repeatedly deleted on Marvin Scott's "Fan" Facebook page. Jessen was inquiring if Scott still believed in taking people who are poor living within the city and forcing them into rural areas. Gary Welsh mentioned this idea of Scott's in this blog post, and Scott called it "recolonization."

Jessen also mentions in his post that Scott, in his 1996 campaign, used names of a few conservative icons that he claimed supported him. It was later uncovered that these claims were baseless.

Jessen then reported that he received a call from Marvin Scott, hoping to clear the air on Jessen's post. Jessen questions why his posts were deleted on Facebook, and Scott initially denies it, but then admits that he doesn't maintain the day-to-day operations of his Facebook fan page. Robert Croddy does. And this practice of deleting anything that isn't downright praise-worthy of Marvin Scott continues to this day. Croddy continues not just to delete posts, but block people who come from across the political spectrum, including yours truly.

And today, the Indiana Stonewall Democrats have called for the resignation of Stan Solomon, Scott's campaign manager. Solomon is a talk radio host, formerly of WIBC, but now hosts on the Internet. His messages on his Twitter feed have come under controversy, including encouraging the bombing of the holy Islamic city of Mecca, and saying that "Gay stands for Got AIDS yet?".

Scott, when confronted with Solomon's hate-speech, gives a fairly evasive response.

Let's be clear: Marvin Scott does not believe in answering questions to the voters he is supposed to be communicating with. Croddy has evaded responsibility in communicating with voters, and months later Scott has done nothing to correct Croddy. I suspect the same will happen to Solomon.

Of course, by alienating the LGBT community, Scott is alienating a growing portion of the Indianapolis/Marion County area. As I noted, a pro-marriage rally only draws a few dozen demonstrators, and much more counter-demonstrators. Scott, running on big government conservatism including supporting Arizona's controversial immigration law and supporting a Federal Marriage Amendment, is doing just that, and is only alienating voters with these positions.

Don't worry, my liberal friends. Carson has this seat in the bag. Do what I did, and ignore the world according to Marvin Scott. He'll be teaching in Butler again when the Spring semester starts up. Maybe, one day, the 7th will have an actual, competitive race.

Bil Browning of the LGBT site The Bilerico Project weighs in as well, and contains screen shots of some of the controversial tweets.