It's fun to wake up on Sunday morning and read your DailyKos comments quoted on the front page of the local newspaper. Montana's foremost political reporter, Chuck Johnson of the Lee Newspapers State Bureau checks the blogs first for responses to Thursday's story on Senate Candidate John Morrison (no-party, MT) and then calls on the national political pundits for their reaction. Check out the whole story
here.
Oh, and Mr.Morrison, since you don't have anything on your campaign website or in your fundraising letters that identifies you as a democrat running against Burns, I will accede to your wishes and refer to you as the no-party candidate.
More fun below the fold.
Some interesting graphs from the article:
Internet commentators and bloggers are having a heyday speculating how the news about Democratic Senate candidate and Auditor John Morrison's extramarital affair may affect his political future.
Last week, the Lee Newspapers State Bureau reported that Morrison, as state auditor, had to hire an outside attorney to handle a 2003 securities fraud investigation. Morrison did so in part because of his two-month extramarital affair in 1998 with a woman who later married the Kalispell businessman whose companies Morrison's office investigated.
The big deal is not the affair, but the fact that the Kalispell businessman, David Tacke, was allowed by Morrison's office to continue to run his scam, ehhh... business, in the vain hope that he would pay back swindled investors. The Feds came in and charged Tacke with mail and wire fraud, of which he was convicted last year and whisked off to federal prison. John Morrison's reputation as a fighting-for-the-little-guy-crusading State Auditor took a big hit with this one.
Chuck Johnson goes on:
Some Internet commentators have pronounced Morrison toast. Others believe he can recover if he plays it straight with voters and another shoe doesn't drop.
That Internet commentator would be me, from Kos's frontpage article on Thursday here.
Johnson looks for a "better" perspective than found on the blogs:
To get a better perspective, the State Bureau called four longtime, nonpartisan political observers.
Three of the four people interviewed believe that news of Morrison's affair and his handling of the case makes it harder for him to attack Burns' ethics.
(One observer Jennifer Duffy) believes Republicans will keep silent now because they might prefer to see Burns face Morrison.
"A damaged Morrison is probably preferable to Tester right now,'' Duffy said. "The big winner here is Burns. He either gets a damaged Democratic opponent (Morrison) or one (Tester) who has struggled to get his arms around a statewide campaign.''
Big time political observer, Larry Sabato weighs in:
Sabato called the news "a big blow'' for Morrison's electoral chances, even if he wins the Democratic nomination.
"Burns has got to be pleased,'' Sabato said. "There were not many national analysts who didn't say Burns was cooked. Morrison may have just pulled Burns out of the oven.''
Ahem Chuck, Burn's cooked goose = Morrison is toast, at least in my cook book. I know I don't get paid to pontificate like Mr. Sabato, but I did sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night, so maybe the blogs have a perspective almost as good as the paid punditry, don't ya think? And besides, its free.
All jest with Mr. Johnson aside, the Montana press has done a great job at reporting the ins and outs of the Senate campaign so far, a much better job than the national press has done in recent presidential campaigns.
So with eight weeks to go until Montana's June 6th primary, Senator Burns is remaining silent about John Morrison's troubles, John Morrison has to dig himself out of a self-dug hole, and Jon Tester has to raise serious money to compete with Burns. As the Chinese curse says, "May you live in intersesting times".