“This Is Not Somebody That Should Be Sent to Washington," Says UVA Prof Lawless on Goncalves

“This Is Not Somebody That Should Be Sent to Washington," Says UVA Prof Lawless on Goncalves

The chair of the political science department at the University of Virginia, Jennifer Lawless, has condemned the false claims by first congressional district candidate John Goncalves.

Last week, GoLocal published a report unveiling Goncalves's repeated misrepresentation of his education record.

He sometimes has claimed is a graduate of Providence public schools; in other situations, he has acknowledged he was, in fact,  a graduate of the private preparatory Wheeler School on the East Side of Providence. 

Goncalves has refused to answer questions about his conflicting claims.

Despite his campaign's portrayal that he is a graduate of Providence public schools, he is, in fact, a graduate of Wheeler — where he is employed.

GoLocal previously uncovered that Goncalves, a Providence City Councilor, had plagiarized portions of one of his policy papers.

To date, more than 15 political hopefuls have announced that they are candidates for the Democratic nomination for the first congressional district.

 

Parsing False Claims

Goncalves is not the only campaign that has stumbled, but Lawless differentiated between sloppiness -- and misleading voters.

GoLocal earlier this month reported that Lt. Governor Sabina Matos’ campaign released the names of a number of politicians that her campaign claimed to have endorsed her -- but after a GoLocal review. had to correct the record -- and retracted a number of endoresments.

“I think the Matos campaign made a very silly mistake in releasing the wrong number [of endorsements]. My bet is that they had a list of people who had said that they would endorse and they hadn't gone through and confirmed all of them, and they released the wrong number and that's sloppy, and it speaks to potential sloppiness in a broader level that could ultimately dam a campaign, but it's not lying about her specific background,” said Lawless

“But to say that you graduated from one school when you graduated from another, and to plagiarize, to engage in explicit behavior of your own, that cannot be attributed to a clerical error,” said Lawless about Goncalves claims and plagiarism. 

 

Compares Goncalves to Santos

“I think it speaks to the fact that this is not somebody that should be sent to Washington —  there are too many people in Washington who already fit that bill, and it stuns me that in an era where we're seeing, you know, the George Santos unraveling and we're seeing sort of what this means for democracy,” said Lawless.

George Santos is the New York Congressman who has been indicted by the Department of Justice and is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee. He has been found to have lied on dozens of aspects of his resume.

Lawless also discussed the negotiations between President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy regarding the debt crisis. She also talked about U.S. Senator Tim Scott's (R-SC) entrance into the presidential campaign.