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Video ads and mailers sent out on behalf of Portland City Council candidate Vadim Mozyrsky misquote and mischaracterize an article WW wrote about Mozyrsky in April.
One Mozyrsky mailer sent to voters quoted WW as writing: “Vadim Mozyrsky is the unifying force Portland is hungry for.”
That is not what we wrote.
WW wrote, in a profile of Mozyrsky on April 20: “Those who have worked with him describe a pragmatic, reserved man whose insistence on bringing more voices to the table can be seen one of two ways: as a betrayal of Portlanders historically silenced by the more affluent or as a unifying force Portland is hungry for.”
Similarly, in this Mozyrsky ad, a slide shows the words “Vadim Mozyrsky is the” and then adds the following quote with WW’s attribution, “unifying force Portland is hungry for.”
It’s not uncommon for political campaigns to liberally cherry-pick quotes to imply the support of a publication. (WW endorsed incumbent Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty in the contest.) But attributing a sentiment to WW that the paper didn’t voice is something worth noting.
A spokesperson for Mozyrsky’s campaign manager told WW in a statement Saturday: “The campaign of Vadim Mozyrsky would like to comment on [WW’s] article published on April 20th and using a portion of the subtitle in a mailer that for some could mischaracterize Willamette Week’s support/non support of the campaign. This was not our intent.”
Several voters reached out to WW in recent days to express bafflement at the mailer, and to wonder whether we’d expressed such enthusiasm for Mozyrsky. We hope this helps.
While Mozyrsky’s ad is particularly noteworthy, WW did a roundup of other mailers this past week that raised our collective eyebrows.