Campaign hijinks: Congressional candidate photoshopped endorsement photo
2nd District congressional candidate Eric Estevez announced the endorsements of fellow House Reps. Bob Elliott (R-Salem) and John Manning (R-Salem) by blasting social media with a picture of the trio standing together in front of the State House.
The photo appears to have been taken during an Estevez campaign rally. The three men are festooned with Estevez for Congress lapel stickers. Estevez campaign signs fill the background and adorn the lectern.
It didn’t happen. Not that way.
The campaign paraphernalia was all photoshopped into a photo Estevez originally posted on Facebook in May. And it’s not the first time Estevez has played fast and loose with his campaign materials.
In 2006, the Pelham Republican was caught passing out business cards that appeared to claim he was a state representative. In his 2010 campaign for Massachusetts state representative, Estevez was forced to acknowledge that a photo in which he appeared to be speaking at a rally for Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker was a fake; retract a press release claiming he had been endorsed by the Massachusetts Italian American Police Officers Association; and rewrite his bio to remove the claim that he had been Barry University student body president.
Estevez would benefit from the counsel of campaign consultant Craig Varoga. “Making substantive changes or altering the context of a photograph is not only misleading,” he writes in Campaigns & Elections, “it’s downright stupid.”