Monday, August 14, 2006

Maybe Not Such a Good Idea.....

On Friday morning, John Kerry and Patrick Murphy (Democratic candidate for the 8th congressional district) held a phone press conference to discuss the Iraq War. The chief of staff for Mike Fitzpatrick (incumbent Republican congressman for the 8th district) decided to call in and try to talk about campaign debates. Keep in mind he is the chief of staff for the congressman, not for the campaign. There is, at least theoretically, supposed to be a wall between congressional staffers and campaign staffers. Congressional staffers are paid by tax dollars. The lines do get blurred sometimes but there is at least a public pretence of distinction.

So this may not have been a good idea on the chief of staff's part. Here is a press release from the state Democratic party. Here is a blog posting from eRobin with a partial transcript (she is good at this stuff).

I have a copy of the audio tapes from the call and hope to listen to them tomorrow.

3 comments:

eRobin said...

It was surreal. Everyone on the call was stunned that Conallen had called in. I'm still confused by it. It reminded me of the old saying: When thought a fool, keep quiet instead of speaking up and removing all doubt.

Carl said...

We did an item on this in our political column today (second item):
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/15267631.htm

Carl

Carl H. Lavin
Deputy managing editor
Philadelphia Inquirer

AboveAvgJane said...

Thanks, Carl, I added another short post with a link, a hat tip, and a quote from the article. I did see it in the paper this morning but was skimming and missed the Fitzp quote.