Valley campaigners witnessed results of fake news during election

I feel it incumbent upon me to share this experience with my Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, and my Representative Jim Costa.

I ran the Hillary Fresno office – the only Hillary Clinton staging office between San Francisco and Los Angeles – for the seven months before the election. In the last few weeks alone, our teams of grassroots volunteers made 40,000 calls for Hillary, including those into 11 battle grounds. As a result, Fresno County was the only blue county in the Valley, helping her to take California by 30 points.

But a few days before the election, we made calls into rural Nevada. The tone of the calls became increasingly hostile toward Clinton, often with blatant misinformation. For instance, one woman in Nevada told one of our phone captains that Hillary had “dropped out of the race” three days before the general election.

Ask Facebook and Twitter if any of their posts included the fake news that Cinton had dropped out. We know too that the criminalization of Clinton was an overt strategy.

The idea that our almost 200 volunteers worked tirelessly for a campaign undermined by the Russians and Donald Trump is unconscionable. Thank you for your tenacity.

This story was originally published September 30, 2017 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Valley campaigners witnessed results of fake news during election."