Either This Democrat Candidate Is Lying, Or Someone Is Running Around Northern Michigan Pretending To Be Him

File this into the drawer for the weirdest stories of 2014.

Jerry Cannon, the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee’s endorsed candidate for Michigan’s 1st Congressional District, recently said that ObamaCare has been a disaster for him, and that he would like to repeal the law and start over.

This didn’t jibe with Washington Democrats platform that they are going to run on ObamaCare in 2014 though, so Cannon quickly backtracked – by insisting that the reporter in question wasn’t actually talking to the real Jerry Cannon!

So either the Cannon campaign is coming up with desperate excuses to get themselves out of a political mess, or there is an impersonator of Jerry Cannon running around Northern Michigan, answering his cell phone and responding to interviews.

Read the whole thing from National Review:

Dem Congressional Candidate Either Has an Impersonator or His Campaign Lied about Devastating Anti-Obamacare Quote

The next day, after listening to about 15 minutes of the audio recording of the interview, Neese called the cell-phone number listed on the card Cannon gave him to ask a follow-up question. The reporter wanted Cannon’s take on Obamacare, as well as the unemployment-insurance extension, which they hadn’t covered in the initial interview.

Details here are important, so bear with me: When the reporter called the number, the call was answered by a person whose voice sounded the same as Cannon’s. The reporter greeted this person as Mr. Cannon and mentioned the previous day’s interview. The person responded to that greeting, and the two chatted about Cannon’s stance on the Affordable Care Act. The person who answered the phone — remember, this is a person whose voice sounded exactly like Cannon’s, who answered the cell phone whose number was listed on a card Cannon personally gave the reporter, and who responded to “Mr. Cannon” — said this:

“I don’t like Obamacare. It’s been a disaster for me. I want to go back to the way it was before.”

…

Here’s where it gets weird: Between 1 and 2 p.m., the paper got a phone call from Cannon’s campaign. The campaign manager, Ted Dick, insisted that Cannon had not spoken with the reporter over the phone and that the phone in question was turned off when the reporter called.

…

Here’s why this odd little situation is notable: Cannon isn’t some random upstart primary contender — he’s the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, and has strong support from the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee. In fact, he’s one of their “Jumpstart candidates,” Democrats with tough but potentially winnable races against Republican incumbents. DCCC Chairman Steve Israel described these candidates as “standouts – women and men who have spent their careers solving problems and putting the middle class ahead of partisan ideology.”

So either a) Cannon’s campaign lied to a local paper about who answered an innocent phone call so that the paper would take down a highly problematic quote on a controversial issue, or b) there is a mysterious Cannon impersonator floating around northern Michigan, answering his cell phone and planting false quotes about him that would be politically damaging.