I want to thank DCDemocrat for posting this for me. I'm writing this (Carnacki) so any errors are mine. It's also close to midnight and I'm asking him to post it sometime this morning. I'll be offline.
Several items to go through. Big news in the Mike Callaghan campaign against that Republican Rubber Stamp Shelley Moore Capito who has managed to be one degree separated from about every Republican scandal of the past six years. The only thing she hasn't done is shoot Dick Cheney's friend in the face, but since Dick calls her the kind of Republican he wants in the White House I'm sure she'd shoot one of his friends for him if he asked.
Yesterday, the DCCC moved Mike Callaghan from the emerging candidate list to the expansion fourth wave. I guess that would make Mike DCCC Red to Blue v4.1.
The General and the Prosecutor
Former NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark endorsed Democratic candidate Mike Callaghan for Congress in West Virginia's 2nd District. Announcement (PDF) here.
Capito supporters make veiled threat against Callaghan supporter
From an email from a new kossack without ability to post diaries yet who requested I post it (story from Charleston Daily Mail on incident below):
Well, I guess the once bright political future of a young man in Pendleton County, WV, an attorney named G. Isaac Sponaugle, III, may be ruined because he dared place an ad in The Pendleton Times (the local weekly paper) connecting the dots for county residents between Capito and Mark Foley.
In the Oct. 19 edition of the newspaper, Isaac placed a large ad with a headline reading "Vote No! on Capito."
What he wrote was hard-hitting. And important.
In Pendleton and other border counties in that area, the dominant daily news media, both print and TV, emanate from Virgina, which means that it tilts Republican and, of course, is not West Virginia-centered.
A lot (probably most) well-informed local residents hadn't realized the furor over Foley and his creepy Internet habits also touched Capito.
Because of this, Isaac brought a letter about her ties to Foley and her membership on the Page Board into the Pendleton Times.
The paper's manager said it was one of those national rather than local issues that would create a bitter back-and-forth controversy in the paper. To the manager's credit, he had, for similar reasons, consistently refused publication of partisan hit letters directed against John Kerry in fall 2004.
He advised Isaac that he would allow the letter to be published as an ad and that responses also would see the light of day only as ads. So, Isaac's sizeable ad ran, and, in my opinion, the reaction to it was, if not seismic, strong. Isaac's ad stated that it was paid for by him. It did not contain the required line "and not authorized by any candidate." The Capito campaign and her supporters seized on this omission and have been muttering darkly, including comments to the newspaper's manager, about possible legal reprisals against Isaac. (They did the same when another supporter of Callaghan's independently printed up bumper stickers saying "No Moore Capito." That individual threatened to take the threats to the press; they backed off.)
This past Friday (Oct. 27), I was visited at the newspaper by John Reisenwebber, Capito's field representative in the area. He told me, point blank, that he didn't know who this Isaac Sponaugle guy is, but he is FINISHED, that any future political aspirations he might entertain...AS A WV DEMOCRAT...have gone up in smoke because he dared author what amounted to (as Capito's Democrat supporters see it, according to Reisenwebber) a smear against Capito. Reisenwebber went on to say that Callaghan, too, was finished in West Virginia Democratic Party politics, because he had refused to roll over the way Capito's 2004 Congressional challenger Erik Wells had done, at least according to Reisenwebber.
Reisenwebber also explained that "Shelley is a political moderate and...she's pro-choice." (He dropped his voice to a snarky, "wink-wink" whisper when he confided "pro-choice.")
A couple of hours later in a local restaurant, I encountered the long-time chair of the Pendleton County Republican Party. That she, too, told me Isaac's letter had ruined him politically within the local Democratic Party was purely coincidental, I'm sure. (It's worth noting that Isaac's namesake and late grandfather was for many years a powerful chairman of the Pendleton County Democratic Party, that his father, also a local attorney, and mother are well-known and influential Democratic Party stalwarts in WV's eastern panhandle and that Isaac several years ago was an intern on Senator Byrd's Washington, DC, staff.)
As we've all been saying, the big race in West Virginia is Mike Callaghan versus Capito. On Saturday at the Senator Byrd rally in Lewisburg, WV, the smart and exquisitely deft Nick Casey, who succeeded Mike Callaghan as chair of the West Virginia Democratic Party in 2004, told me that a poll commissioned by the state party shows that Mike can win this race--depending on turnout--and Nick agreed when I said that if Mike had had real money for his campaign, Capito now would be on the verge of being swept into the dustbin of present West Virginia political history. She may be anyway, and Nick reported that he had lobbied the Democratic National Campaign Committee (DNCC) to dump money into the tightening race.
Apparently, the DNCC may drop up some serious dough into Mike's campaign. But ultimately, it all depends on voter turnout, including that in substantially rural areas like Randolph and Pendleton counties. This post was not authorized by Mike Callaghan or any candidate... and Isaac may once have been busted for jaywalking, too. Ed Tallman Editor, Pendleton Times Member, Pocahontas County Democrat Executive Committee
Here's the story in the Charleston Daily Mail, which despite having a history of pro-Republican bias did a good job of covering it.
Some Mike Callaghan supporters have taken it upon themselves independently to lobby against the re-election of Republican Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito.
One Pendleton County lawyer even bought a $185 ad in the weekly Pendleton Times newspaper urging residents to "Vote No!" on Capito, who faces Democratic challenger Callaghan for her 2nd District seat.
But Isaac Sponaugle III never envisioned the amount of attention his ad would garner in the rural 8,000-person county bordering Virginia. The ad, which ran Oct. 17, sparked a back-and-forth war of words between Sponaugle and the Capito campaign, which purchased an ad in the paper last week responding to Sponaugle's criticisms.
Sponaugle said he bought yet another ad that will be printed this week.
His first ad, which ran about a third of a page, was originally written as a letter-to-the-editor discussing Capito's connections to embattled congressmen such as Mark Foley, Tom Delay and Bob Ney. The newspaper rejected the letter because the owner doesn't want national issues on the opinion page.
Sponaugle, 27, a staunch Democrat, said he wanted to inform Pendleton County residents who may not have realized Capito's standing on the House Page Board in the midst of the Foley page sex scandal. The ad says Capito should have known about Foley's actions.
Most television and print news coverage emanates from Harrisonburg, Va., Sponaugle said, and most residents aren't up to speed on local congressional issues.
"A lot of people didn't know anything about it," Sponaugle said. "I'm just trying to bring the people up-to-date."
The Capito campaign says Sponaugle violated Federal Election Commission laws by not including the line "Not authorized by any political party, candidate or candidate's committee" in the ad's disclaimer. The ad, however, included Sponaugle's signature and stated he paid for it.
The Capito campaign calls the ads "personal, vicious and untruthful" attacks. It's amazing how the truth is so vicious when the facts are so stacked against you because of your own misdeeds in Congress.
Callaghan's spokesman had the right response to Capito's threats: "Talk about discouraging people from participating in a democracy."
That's exactly what Republicans always want to do: discourage people from participating in a democracy because they know if they can't lie, they can't suppress and they can't intimidate that they can't win.