Yesterday, the Northam for Governor campaign sent the candidate himself out on TV to deny knowing anything about this shameful ad.

“That commercial did not come from our campaign, and it’s certainly not a commercial that I would have wanted to run,” Northam said.

The very same day, his campaign made this filing, officially disclosing that the race-baiting murder-truck ad was accepted as an in-kind contribution to Northam for Governor:

Virginia campaign law is very different from federal law. In federal races, outside groups conduct independent expenditures and are strictly prohibited from coordinating with official campaigns. In Virginia, independent expenditures are allowed — but so are communications that are directly coordinated with the campaign.

The in-kind disclosure from the Northam campaign confirms that the murder-truck ad was not independent of the campaign, but was a coordinated communication:

Indeed, the Latino Victory Fund — the group which ran the ad — has not made any independent expenditures in Virginia and therefore has filed no campaign disclosures of their own. Coordinated communications are instead reported by the official campaign as an in-kind contribution:

The Northam campaign was asked about the glaring discrepancy between their public statements and official filings and offered this curious response:

“They” legally had to report the in-kind? No, they — LVF — reported nothing. Everything they have done in this race including the murder-truck ad was coordinated with the Northam campaign and disclosed by the Northam campaign.

Why would a campaign allow coordinated communications to go out without reviewing their content? The only reason I can think of is to preserve willfull ignorance.

The plain fact is Ralph Northam thought this ad would work to boost flagging turnout among Democrat-leaning minority voters in Northern Virginia. Even when he was faced with initial public backlash, he refused to disavow the ad — doing so only after an actual murder-truck attack took place, driven not by a Gillespie-supporting tea partier, but by a jihadi immigrant.

So much for the VMI Honor Code.