Election Day - Down To The Finish line

I found this story on the Daily Kos when I got home from making phonecalls for the Maryland Democrats.

When you go there you will see an outrageous brochure designed to fool, primarily, African-American Marylanders. This shows how little respect the Republicans have for their constituency.

Jack Johnson, PG County Executive held a press cohference and was reported in the Gazette:

"Here we have today a piece of literature that really, to say the least, is untruthful," Johnson said. "I'm offended ... and I'm angry about it."

He said he and Mfume are still strong supporters of the Democratic ticket, in which Martin O'Malley and Anthony Brown are the candidates for governor and lieutenant governor and Ben Cardin is the candidate for the U.S. Senate. They are not supporting Republicans in the statewide races, Johnson said.

Curry, however, recently endorsed Steele for Senate.

The glossy color brochure says it is paid for and authorized by the Bob Ehrlich for Maryland Committee and Steele for Maryland Inc., which are the names of the official campaign committees for those candidates.

The offices of Steele and Ehrlich could not be reached for comment at press time, but Maryland GOP spokeswoman Audra Miller said the flyer is not from the party, and that she had never seen it before.

"It's odd that they're both on there like that," she said, referring to the fact that both Steele and Ehrlich were listed as authorizing the brochure.

Johnson said he had put calls in to both Ehrlich and Steele.

"We have to assume that they know about it, or it was done under their authority," Johnson said.

I find this outrageous.

Vote these guys into early retirement tomorrow!


_____________________________________
e-mail me at btchakir@mac.com
I appreciate comments and suggestions.

Lieberman is the dirtiest campaigner of them all...

This field report from David Sirota is in the Huffington Post:

This is a dispatch from the campaign trail cross-posted from the Lamont campaign's official blog. Get involved and help us make history here in Connecticut - go here to see how you can help.


For a guy who has screwed up so many huge things (say, for instance the Iraq War), I must say: Joe Lieberman is damn good at minute pettiness. I guess it's easy to be good at that if you have no principles or basic sense of manners, and are willing to deploy your surrogates to disrupt a major veterans event by trying to physically throw Ned Lamont out of the parade today in Hartford. It was the Return of the Lieberthugz, Part II.

Yup, you read that right: at the beginning of today's Veterans Day parade in downtown Hartford, Joe smiled and shook Ned's hand, and then quickly sent his folks out to try physically bar Ned from marching with Congressman John Larson and other Democrats who invited him to march. It was one of those moments where all you could think of saying was wow, stay classy Joe Lieberman.

Ned decided not to listen, and jogged around the Lieberman folks while we distracted them, and caught back up to the Democrats. When the Lieberman people again tried to physically remove Ned from the parade, Larson backed them off once and for all telling them simply: "Ned's with us." That could be the bumper sticker slogan of this campaign, as it perfectly sums up how in more and more people's minds, Ned represents standing up for regular people, and Joe represents standing up for the status quo.
I'll be frank: I was a bit nervous about the parade from the get-go because Joe has joined with Vice President Cheney to try to liken Ned and the majority of Connecticut who want change in Iraq to Osama bin Laden fans. But my concerns were allayed as we walked through Hartford - veterans kept coming up to Ned thanking him for having the guts to run in this race, and the guts to stand up and say what needs to be said about the war in Iraq.

Joe was, per the norm, as polished as a patent leather shoe, but as dirty as the sole of that same shoe had it been trudged through a manure pile. He marched waving and smiling - but not to the crowd, because there were very few people cheering for him. But he knows how to create a picture for the cameras, so he went ahead and waved and thumbs-upped the group of his own staffers and security guards walking through the crowd along the sidewalks.

But while Joe is smart about the tight shot, it was the wide angle pictures that I snapped here that told his story. While Ned marched with Democrats like Larson and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Joe marched with embattled Republican Congresswoman Nancy Johnson and conservative radio host Brad Davis.


Remember when Joe told reporters he wasn't going to say whether he thought it would be good for Democrats to take back the House? This picture tells you why he said this - because he's actively campaigning for Johnson to defeat Chris Murphy in what is shaping up to be one of the most important House races in the country.

What's most interesting to me about this campaign in terms of the race's mechanics is how unflappable Ned is. I've worked with a lot of different candidates, and all of them have their good traits and bad ones. But most often, non-career politicians aren't very even-keeled at this point in the race.

Not so for Ned. The guy is really passionate about what we're doing and how important this race is in trying to end the war in Iraq - but he never gets shaken by Lieberman's pettiness. My bet is that's really a commentary on Ned's focus - a focus that likely comes from his business experience where he's competed and won against the major cable conglomerates in one of the toughest industries out there. It must also be a commentary on Ned's smarts - though I've never asked him, I bet that Ned knows that everytime the career politician he's running against pulls one of these stunts, that career politician is once again sending a strong signal of desperation.

Today was a great example of this. When they tried to bully Ned, he didn't get upset - he just figured out a way to get around them so that he could meet with as many veterans as possible to talk with them about the issues. It was a successful event because it's obvious, to echo Larson, more and more voters know "Ned's with us" and Joe is not.

It's not too late to get rid of a traitor to the Democrats and to Connecticut... C'mon friends and family in my native state... get out there and fight for Ned Lamont!




_____________________________________
e-mail me at btchakir@mac.com
I appreciate comments and suggestions.