Hoboken Mayor Candidate Blasts ‘Fake News,’ Smear Campaign

HOBOKEN, NJ — The following letter to the editor comes courtesy of Hoboken councilman and mayoral candidate Mike DeFusco. Send local news tips, photos and press releases to eric.kiefer@patch.com

"Fake News has been trumpeted across the headlines every day since the 2016 Presidential Election, but this time it has hit us far closer to home. The racist, disgusting fliers that were distributed over the weekend in Hoboken were an attack on my colleague and opponent Ravi Bhalla, but they were also a deliberate and well timed attempt to smear me and destroy my campaign for mayor. The criminals behind these fliers sought to hurt me by painting me as a racist, something that anyone who knows me can tell you is the furthest thing from the truth. THE FLIER WAS DESIGNED SO EVERY PICTURE OF THE RACIST EPITHET WOULD ALSO INCLUDE MY NAME ASSOCIATED WITH THE “PAID FOR BY” LINE. Outside influences are at work right now trying to sway our election by making people believe things about me – and about Ravi – that aren’t true. Our democracy is at stake. This incident seeks to drive the conversation away from what our election is about and reduces us to stereotypes. It sums up what is happening across our political spectrum right now.

"Prominent news outlets and even Senator Cory Booker propagated this “fake news" by sharing images of the altered flier with my name in it, without mentioning that I had nothing to do with it and was also being defamed. They are people who are supposed to be protecting us from this culture of fake news but they picked up a picture of the flier with my name attached to it and tweeted it out to millions – without calling for comment or explaining I was being criminally misrepresented. They further pushed the story and ended up doing the dirty work for these criminals. Right now, our culture is guilty of paying attention to flashy headlines without the actual story and it needs to end."

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Photo: City of Hoboken