Herron's website deleted reference to 'liberal causes'

A website promoting a book by Tennessee congressional candidate Roy Herron (D) has removed a reference in a book review to his support for “liberal causes,” without noting the deletion.

Herron signed up last week to run for retiring Rep. John Tanner’s (D-Tenn.) seat, and his book, “God and Politics,” has been the source of some jostling between Democrats and Republicans since then. While the GOP pointed out that Publishers Weekly said Herron advocated “liberal causes” in the book, Democrats noted that Republican former Sen. Bill Frist (Tenn.) has endorsed the book.

But Herron could now have some explaining to do, as the website’s quote from Publishers Weekly is incomplete and deletes the same clause Republicans criticized him for.

The original Publishers Weekly review says: “Covering such topics as ‘Doing Justice’ and ‘Protecting Life,’ Herron writes with sensitivity to the politically conservative members of his audience, but argues that Christian politicians and citizens should support a number of liberal causes.”

On Herron’s website, though, the review has everything after the word “audience” cut out, and it fails to note the change with an ellipsis.

Herron’s campaign suggests it has nothing to hide. It notes that the same book review currently appears on another part of the site with the “liberal causes” clause intact.

In both cases, 14 words were deleted from the original review. Herron’s campaign said it was done to reduce the quotes to 200 words (both quotes on the website are exactly 200 words, despite having different sections deleted).

It’s not clear when the changes were made, but a cached version of the second page existed on Nov. 11, with no differences from what is posted today. At that point, Herron was running in the Democratic primary for governor.