The Democratic candidate for Florida’s Attorney General is fighting back against a fake Twitter account and website claiming he’s “soft on crime.”
The website realseanshaw.com makes several claims about Shaw’s record, saying he is “not a friend of law enforcement.”
The site includes the following sentence at the bottom: “Paid political advertisement paid for by A Safer Florida, 1747 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20006, independently of any candidate or candidate’s committee.”
The political action committee A Safer Florida is run by the Republican Attorneys General Association, which is also headquartered at the address above.
A Twitter account with the handle @RealSeanShaw was also recently created.
The account’s home page is blank except for the message “@RealSeanShaw hasn’t tweeted.”
owever, 8 On Your Side found a “Promoted” tweet yesterday that says, “When it comes to keeping us safe, Sean Shaw receives a FAILING grade,” with a link to the same realseanshaw.com website.
Sean Shaw’s actual Twitter handle is @SShawFL.
Politics On Your Side reached out to Shaw’s campaign, who replied with the following statement from spokesman Michael Starr Hopkins:
“When you can’t run on your record, you run on fear and distractions. That’s what the Moody campaign has decided to do. The Shaw campaign is going to stick to our message of protecting Floridians and bringing a new direction to the Attorney Generals office. The voters will decide which vision they support.”
Ashley Moody, Republican candidate for attorney general, was herself the target of a misleading ad by her primary opponent, Frank White.
The fake Twitter account was changed in the past 24 hours to read “Parody Account” at the top of the bio.
Parody accounts are prolific on Twitter, and sometimes very popular, but with social media companies like Twitter and Facebook cracking down on fake accounts, it’s unclear whether the account violates Twitter’s terms of service for impersonation.
Watch Politics On Your Side every Sunday morning on WFLA News Channel 8 at 9:30, right before Meet the Press.