This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The Weekly Standard sure blew the lid off a neat little bit of racism in the 4th District race, when it revealed that Utah Democratic Party doctored a photo of Republican candidate Mia Love, who is black, in a mailer they sent out to make her look even darker.
What a scoop!
Actually, the scoop in this case is something you would use to put this story into a plastic bag if you were a dog owner.
The genius who wrote the piece didn't bother to get the actual document or check with the party. Instead he relied on a scan of the mailer which was sent to him from a Republican delegate in Salt Lake County. It turns out that the scan itself was lousy and several shades darker than the photo on the actual mailer. You can click on each photo in the boxes on the left.
Of course, some will quibble with running a black and white photo of a candidate when the color photo was available. But that is a common practice in these sorts of ads and something that the Love campaign and her Republican backers have done in their own mailers.
— Robert Gehrke Twitter: @RobertGehrke