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Friday, June 9, 2006

Seattle Tested

Posted by on June 9 at 15:55 PM

For all the Democratic Party hacks and wonks who are tracking the run-up to this fall when the Democrats are supposedly going to take back the House & Senate, there’s a Seattle connection to this week’s exciting news out of Montana, where a grassroots, insurgent D, Jon Tester, scored a momentum-building win in Tuesday’s primary.

Tester beat the establishment Democrat, conservative John Morrison, for the chance to take out the incumbent Republican senator, Conrad Burns. Tester, who was outspent 3 to 1, won by more than 25% in the primary. Here’s DailyKos on Tester’s win last Tuesday night.

Tester’s TV ads (a cute spot that hyped Tester’s “flat top” farmer’s haircut) and Tester’s mail were done by two Seattle-based consultants, Dan Kully & Christian Sinderman respectively. Sinderman also advised Tester’s team on the their campaign ground game and sent two of his staffers out to Montana for the week leading up to the primary…to do some serious GOTV work.

The grass roots Democratic surge in Montana is ready for round two. Bring on Burns.

Burns is a poster child for the Culture of Corruption. Between 2001 and 2004, while the chair of the Interior Subcommittee on Appropriations, Burns received nearly $150,000 in campaign contributions from lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Abramoff’s clients, and other donors connected to Abramoff. He’s also an archconservative, scoring zero ratings from NARAL and the ACLU (w a 5% rating from the League of Conservation Voters.) Meanwhile, he scores 100% w the Christian Coalition and a 94% from the National Chamber of Commerce.

My ulterior motive for posting this: Maria Cantwell, get your shit together, and tap local talent. Right now, as opposed to Tester, you’ve got about as much momentum as a Richard Conlin committee meeting.


CommentsRSS icon

yay, Montana!

feel the tidal wave!
love the tidal wave!
surf the tidal wave!

wash the West clean!

Josh - last I heard Sinderman is a key consultant to Cantwell --- n'est pas?

Good News in Montana - why the R"s took root there is a mystery.

Burns is among the worst

Jake,

Still on the periphery, but I don't think as key a player as he was... which is what I'm getting at.

We'll see in the next round of C-4s how much Cantwell used the local folks, but when I did that article last April based on her First Quarter C-4s, here's what I came away writing: "Despite the battle-tested Democratic campaign talent in town—the Democrats control the state house, the state senate, and the governor's mansion—Cantwell's campaign is relying on out-of-state hires to run the show. Cantwell's campaign manager, Matt Butler, is a former John Kerry campaign staffer (now there was an impressive effort). And Cantwell's brand-new spokesperson, Amanda Mahnke, just got in from D.C. a week ago. And according to Cantwell's most recent campaign-finance reports, 64 percent of the money she spent on consultants and fundraising went to political firms outside the state. Local politico Christian Sinderman helped propel Cantwell in 2000, but he's just a blip on Cantwell's payroll now. (80 percent of McGavick's comparable spending stayed in state.)"

I don't have the C-4s in front of me right now, but I think Sinderman got a check for $5K last time.

Josh,
When you're pimping for Sinderman, do you get a five percent kickback?

You go, girl!

I believe Kully did the ads for Busby too. It's an interesting fact to keep in mind when you read the fair weather "Busby let DLC DC beltway consultants run her loser campaign" screeds that have popped up at Dailykos lately.

Five percent kickback? Hah! As Josh's neighbor you may wish he had a litle more disposable income, but Josh knows I'm cheap.

And often lucky enough to sign on with a good candidate.

(We are all only as good as the candidates for whom we flack, and typically not even that good.)

Oh, speaking of, this Montana guy IS good, so send him a little spare change, good readers of the Slog:

http://www.testerforsenate.com/

Regarding Cantwell, while I thank Josh for minding my bank account, I feel about as "key" as I wanna be most days, and there is plenty of local talent around helping (and weren't most of us new to town at some point?)


Yes, isn't it charming that Josh is minding your bank account?

Careful, Christan, you might get germs.

Culture of Corruption, Part Deux: Feit, as usual, was too demure to tell you the rest of the story. But then, Feit was just channelling Kos ... "(I)t turns out that the first draft of the story omitted serious facts, and it turns out that the scandal really is a scandal. It's bad."

The scandal Kos misrepresented & that Feit utterly & deliberately(?) hid from you isn't, of course, the familiar scandal against Republican Burns. It was the bigger scandal against Democrat Morrison.

There's a pattern here: Tom DeLay (like Trent Lott before him, & like Gingrich & Livingstone before Lott) removed themselves from positions of power after being convicted only by public opinion. Montana's Morrison, like Democrat William Jefferson, tried & try to bluff & bull their way through blatant scandal as if the public doesn't care. Reason? Their liberal public mostly doesn't care.

incest father and daughter with mother and son!

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