What's a candidate to do when he can't find enough volunteers to set up chairs and tables before a fundraising event?
Why, obviously, allow local functionaries to supply prisoners for that purpose.
John McCain is on his barnstorming tour of forgotten America, and found himself in Homewood, Alabama earlier this week:
The McCain campaign was charged $250 to use two rooms in the hall, which normally would book for $1,200 on a weeknight. The campaign also was given free labor from Homewood City Jail inmates to set up tables and chairs for the event, avoiding a $100 set-up fee, but did pay a standard $50 cleaning fee.
I haven't seen this diaried, but thought it was somewhat telling on a number of levels...
That the McCain campaign had no paid staffers or volunteers able to set up a few hundred chairs in Homewood speaks to both the finance and enthusiasm gap. But having prisoners do these duties? It just seems like a parody straight out of a Dickens novel.
Apparently, only the GOP can get free prisoner labor (sorry all you Dems down there in Alabama who thought it sounds like a good deal). So says the Democratic Party Chairman of Jefferson County, anyway:
I was charged full book rate. I was never offered any free inmate services to set up for my event. Mayor McCulley owes an apology to every citizen in Homewood as to why he arbitrarily changed the fee for this out-of-state senator from Arizona.
For a guy who admitted to not knowing much about the economy, this is a symbolically ripe opportunity for McCain, and I think he should propose inclusion of free prison labor in his economic plan, to offset his tax cuts for the wealthy. It would be bold, innovative, and something just about all law abiding Americans could get behind. The law breakers? Not so much.
About the lower rate charged for McCain:
City Councilman David Hooks said that the council typically debates and votes each time there is a request to discount or waive the rent, but that didn't happen this time.
"I'd be concerned with the legal ramifications of that, from the city's perspective," Hooks said. "It could be a problem for the city to have made in-kind donations to a political candidate by charging less rent or having inmates do work for the event."
Of course, the McCain campaign says it knew nothing about prisoners being used in lieu of volunteers or staffers or a set up fee, and have issued a plain denial:
McCain campaign officials in Washington said they knew nothing about Homewood using inmate labor at no cost, nor did they ask for a cut rate.
"We paid what we were asked to pay," said Jeff Sadosky, McCain campaign spokesman.
The McCain event invoice shows an $850 total, including a $150 permit to serve alcohol and a refundable $400 security deposit.
One thing I find strange is that this is being reported by The Birmingham News. They are, as Scott Horton has noted many times, one of the three major newspapers in Alabama, and completely in the tank for the GOP. So why would they publish the story? Their history suggests they would just sit on it.