The United States continues to hurtle towards the midterm elections later this year, with Democrats hoping to pick up the at least couple of dozen seats in the U.S. House they need to retake control of the body. One of the Democrats hoping to help the party get to that magic number is Virginia’s Leslie Cockburn, who has now come down tough on her Republican opponent.
Her line of attack is not something the average observer might have guessed, though. In a series of Twitter posts, she condemned Republican Denver Riggleman as a “devotee of Bigfoot erotica.”
In one post, she wrote;
‘My opponent Denver Riggleman, running mate of Corey Stewart, was caught on camera campaigning with a white supremacist. Now he has been exposed as a devotee of Bigfoot erotica. This is not what we need on Capitol Hill.’
My opponent Denver Riggleman, running mate of Corey Stewart, was caught on camera campaigning with a white supremacist. Now he has been exposed as a devotee of Bigfoot erotica. This is not what we need on Capitol Hill. pic.twitter.com/0eBvxFd6sG
— Leslie Cockburn (@LeslieCockburn) July 29, 2018
She included in that post a screenshot of an Instagram post from Riggleman’s account featuring an image of “Bigfoot” with a black box over the crotch area.
The piece was explained by Riggleman in his original captions as meant to accompany a forthcoming book called “Mating Habits of Bigfoot and Why Women Want Him.”
The other screenshot that Cockburn put up featured a similar image of a “Bigfoot” with its crotch censored, this time with Riggleman’s head photoshopped atop the body.
From my opponent Denver Riggleman’s Bigfoot erotica collection. pic.twitter.com/ELe0TWJh21
— Leslie Cockburn (@LeslieCockburn) July 29, 2018
Riggleman responded to the posts in comments to The Daily Progress of Charlottesville, Virginia, calling them “absurd.” He explained the whole concept behind the original Instagram posts as a running joke among his military friends.
The GOP Congressional campaign also responded to the other issue Cockburn raised, namely, Riggleman’s association with the controversial Corey Stewart. The GOP U.S. Senate nominee in Virginia has been called out as anti-Semitic and racist, thanks to his association with white supremacists like Jason Kessler and Paul Nehlen and his passionate embrace of causes like protecting and honoring the long dead Confederacy. Stewart appeared alongside Kessler at a rally in Virginia in 2017 putting a local politician against Confederate statues on blast, and he endorsed the virulently anti-Semitic Nehlen at one point.
Riggleman has, in response to criticism of campaigning with Stewart, made a stated opposition to views shared by Kessler, Nehlen, and their allies clear. The Riggleman campaign also sought to prop Stewart up, asserting that he has effectively “repeatedly disavowed Jason Kessler.”
That response was not enough for the Cockburn campaign. While praising him for explicitly distancing himself from hate groups, the campaign asserted that he should “relay that message to his running mate Corey Stewart.”
Both men ran for the Virginia governor’s seat in 2017 and lost in the Republican primary to Ed Gillespie, who himself lost in the general election.
The seat Riggleman and Cockburn are campaigning for is in a strongly Republican district, and the race is currently rated by the Cook Political Report — which first published info about Riggleman’s Bigfoot posts — as “Lean Republican.” The seat’s incumbent, GOP Rep. Tom Garrett, declined to seek re-election in the face of scandal over how he’s treated his staff members.
Twitter’s response to Cockburn dragging Riggleman is below.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
