Virginia Democrats have assigned a new tracker someone who follows around and records basically everything a politician says or does to Republican Senate candidate George Allen. In 2006, Allen, then an incumbent senator, famously tanked his reelection campaign by referring to an American-born Democratic tracker of Indian ancestry as “macaca,” apparently a slur for North Africans. The new tracker? Twenty-three-year-old Alan Piracha, who, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “also appears to be of foreign descent, with his surname a common one in India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.” Democrats deny that Piracha was chosen solely to tempt Allen into saying something racist. “That couldn’t have been further from the thought process,” a spokesman for the Democratic Party of Virginia says.
Allen Being Tracked By Alan [Virginia Politics/Richmond Times Dispatch via Ben Smith/Politico]
