Reports are circulating that presidential candidate Tassilo Wallentin has “invented” his campaign manager. After confirming on Monday that he had simply pulled a name from his fingers in response to a journalist’s question, the lawyer turned on Tuesday: These representations were “distorted”.
It all started with a performance on Puls 4 and then with an ORF interview. In a radio interview taped Sunday, Wallentin said: “When journalists asked me — or even in the Interior Ministry — who my campaign manager was, I made up a name. But in reality it was me.”
“It is made up, yes, of course. Because it is not a legal position”
When asked if that was legal, he continued: “It’s made up, yes, of course. Since it’s not a legal position, they asked me who is responsible for the coordination, and I said, Mr. Bla-bla,” Wallentin says. . “I called him, I think Svaricek or something.”
On Monday, he confirmed this statement at the request of the Austrian news agency: “It was a one-man show, I am really proud of the success,” Wallentin said. He did not come up with a first name for the campaign manager, he said. Wallentin did not respond to the APA’s follow-up on whether an employee of a law firm of the same name who worked for him gave his name or whether he was also not real.
On Tuesday, the Viennese lawyer then dismissed “the widespread representation that he invented his ‘election campaign manager'” as “distorted” and “taken out of context”. When asked by the media for a campaign manager as a contact person for organizational questions, he gave the last name of a clerk at the start of the election campaign because he did not actually employ a campaign manager.
“Budget would never have been enough”
Wallentin then told this story “of his own accord out of irony on election night, after being repeatedly accused of being massively backed by a billionaire,” according to a press release from his law firm. In fact, his campaign budget would never have been enough to hire a campaign manager, as he emphasized several times during the campaign.
Source: Krone
I’m an experienced news author and editor based in New York City. I specialize in covering healthcare news stories for Today Times Live, helping to keep readers informed on the latest developments related to the industry. I have a deep understanding of medical topics, including emerging treatments and drugs, the changing laws that regulate healthcare providers, and other matters that affect public health.
