Tracking Terry's wife?

The Virginia blogosphere is up in arms over the alleged tracking of Terry McAuliffe's wife, Dorothy, by the Moran campaign. It began two days ago when Not Larry Sabato posted:

IN AN UNPRECEDENTED MOVE IN VIRGINIA, (AND SHOWING HORRIBLE JUDGMENT) THE BRIAN MORAN CAMPAIGN HAS SENT VIDEO TRACKERS OUT TO FOLLOW AND RECORD DOROTHY MCAULIFFE.

The McAuliffe campaign fanned the flames. In a press release, senior strategist Mo Elleithee said:

When the Moran campaign said that it was time to play hardball, we didn't realize that meant following other candidate spouses! We're flattered that they find Dorothy to be as compelling a surrogate as we do. The more people hear both her and Terry make our case, the better.

Virginia Bloggers are upset, and rightfully so if the allegations are true. Jim White believes that politicians families are off-limits, and aznew and Cobalt6 push for a politics worthy of adults. And they are right.

The Huffington Post, however, contacted the Moran campaign for their version of events, something NLS did not do. They offer a more complete picture to the incident:

But an aide to the opposing candidate, Virginia House Democratic Caucus Chairman Brian Moran, says it was nothing more than a bizarre, coincidental, and one-time incident, hardly the nefarious politicking that has been portrayed.

Dorothy McAuliffe, wife of the former DNC Chair and confidante to the Clintons, was taped by the Moran campaign while giving a speech at the Stafford Democratic Committee this past week. But aides to Moran say it wasn't meant to be. The videographer had gone to the event to tape a Moran campaign official, Steve Jarding, who ran Mark Warner's run for the governor in 2001. McAuliffe's wife took to the stage afterward and the film kept on rolling. "We didn't turn the camera off," an aide said, "but it was coincidental. We don't have a camera tracking her." ...

But it is at this juncture, it seems, that the minor controversy will end. The decision to keep the film rolling while Dorothy McAuliffe spoke, whether it was a mistake to begin with or not, apparently won't happen again.

"We have not, are not and will not be 'tracking' Dorothy McAuliffe," said Moran spokesman Jesse Ferguson.

I hope that clears things up. Now, I am as guilty of reading NLS as the next political junkie, since he is a political media driver whose daily readership outpaces most national blogs, but, it seems to me, especially in light of his coverage of the presidential primary, that NLS is oftentimes more concerned with controversy and mud-slinging than he is with truth-seeking and properly informing his readership. I wish the VA blogosphere could quit him.