Bernie Reeves, a candidate in the Republican runoff for North Carolina's 13th Congressional District, is challenging opponent Bill Randall on whether he plagiarized The Sharon Statement, written at the home of conservative activist William F. Buckley as the founding charter for Young Americans for Freedom in 1960.
In a press release today, the Reeves campaign submits seven examples of how a "Charter of Principles" of Bill Randall's grassroots organization Concerned Citizens for Truth borrows exact wording — or almost exact, in some cases — from The Sharon Statement.
"The problem here," said Reeves in a prepared statement, "is when a candidate plagiarizes someone else's words and say they are his own he not only hurts his campaign, he hurts the Republican Party and conservatives in general. Bill needs to offer a clear explanation."
UPDATE: Randall tells me in a phone conversation that he did not plagiarize The Sharon Statement, and says a "footnote" at the bottom of the Concerned Citizens for Truth web-page will answer my questions.
The footnote reads, "The CCFT 2004 original charter statement (clearly referenced at the top of this webpage) contains this disclaimer: 'Our charter parallels some of the basic tenants adopted by the American Conservative Union.' The original, unaltered charter statement has an electronic date/time stamp of 12-1-2004 @ 3:32 PM. There has been no attempt by the Randall for Congress campaign to plagiarize others' work or information."
3 comments:
BS! It is either plagiarism or he is taking credit for someone else plagiarism.
Mr. Green, The footnote that you have was not there yesterday. At least not in its current form. I have a pdf file of a screenshot from yesterday, I'll be happy to show, or perhaps you could call Mr. Randall again and ask him when the new footnote was added? Perhaps it was after the obvious plagiarism was pointed out. Additoinally there seems to be yet another instance of misleading information. The 1960 Sharon Statement was not a product of the American Conservative Union. All this can be googled in an instant. While you have Mr. Randall on the phone ask him about Wisconsin and when he adopted this charter there. Sigh...
You make a good point, DBerwyn. When I initially linked to the page, I don't recall the footnote being there. After Randall called me and told me to look at the footnote, I was pretty certain that it wasn't there before, but I couldn't swear to it.
It's problematic for Randall to say the 2004 charter gives proper credit for the authorship of the language, but the 2004 charter is not published. Meanwhile, the 2009 charter has no mention of the language's origins until the charge of plagiarism is leveled. And yes, Randall credits the American Conservative Union, which was founded in 1964, with the statement, while its actual origin, The Sharon Statement, was drafted in 1960.
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