By fitsnews – September 12, 2012
SILLY SEASON … MEET FISH
Fish stories typically involve the size of the fish … not the identity of the fisherman. But in the world of South Carolina politics, things have a way of turning out all sorts of backward (especially during campaign season).
Take the story of Robert Rikard – the Democratic attorney who is challenging S.C. Senate President John Courson (RINO-Richland) for a seat in the State Senate. According to one GOP consultant, Rikard was “arrested” in 2007 for some sort of boating violation. We didn’t originally think much of this tip – but when a quick search of Richland County’s public records turned up the citation we decided it was at least worth discussing with our vast network of Democratic sources.
That’s when the story got interesting …
Several of the Democratic operatives we asked about the Rikard citation directed us to this webpage for a Lexington, S.C. professional fisherman named … Robert Rikard. Confident that we had stumbled into a case of mistaken identity, we went back to our GOP sources and informed them of the Democrats’ response.
That’s when the story got really interesting …
The Republicans quickly pointed out that the Robert Rikard on the citation had the middle initial “G.,” was born on August 18, 1971 and shared the same home address as the Senatorial candidate. They also pointed out that the “other” Robert Rikard had a different date of birth and address.
Ruh-roh!
To his credit Rikard – who was apparently unaware of all this back-and-forth – immediately acknowledged that he was the individual who received a ticket for “creating wake in a no-wake zone” on Lake Murray in 2007.
“There was a storm on the lake,” he said. ”I was trying to get my kids back to the marina.”
Rikard says he paid the $40 fine associated with the violation.
Democrats are spinning the incident as an example of GOP desperation. Meanwhile Republicans are spinning the exchange as an example of the Democrats’ inability to shoot straight with the media.
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