Worst Congressional Candidate Ever

Gail Collins reflects on some of the great moments in Campaign 2010.

The Constant Weader joins the game, trying to pick the "Worst Congressional Candidate Ever," but finds that the field of nominees is crowded this year.

There are the usual suspects, of course: Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, Sharron Angle, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul -- and my favorite, Carl Paladino. Never mind his inauspicious bathroom breaks or even his condemnation of homosexuality. Patrick McGeenhan of the Times reports today that at about the same time Paladino was named Buffalonian of the Year, a court named him conservator of his elderly aunt's affairs. Her main asset was her modest home, which she owned outright. According to public records, under Carl's supposedly conservatorship,

Anna M. Paladino’s finances deteriorated along with her health, so much so that she became dependent on Medicaid.... Her house, her most cherished asset, was sold — first to Mr. Paladino’s son, and later, for no money down and much less than its appraised value, to the woman who would become Mr. Paladino’s mistress and bear a child by him.

A conservator has a fiduciary duty to his ward, & his dealings must be above reproach. Even an appearance of self-dealing can be unlawful. You decide if you think Carl Paladino met his legal obligation to his beloved aunt.

This was supposed to be the Year of the Republican Woman. Frankly, it looks as if it's pretty dangerous to get anywhere near some Republican men. And I don't just mean Rand Paul aides & Carl Paladino.

Some Republican men had trouble with dirty, sexy things. In Texas' 27th Congressional District Republican nominee Blake Farenthold got caught on camera wearing rubber-ducky jammies while holding on tight to a buxom young lady in less modest bedtime attire. Farenthold's opponent, Democratic incumbent Rep. Solomon Ortiz, ran this oppo ad:

... And who can forget young Ben Quayle, who days after intoning in an artsy (& ever-so-mockable) campaign ad that "Barack Obama is the worst President in history," and promising to go to Washington "and knock the hell out of the place," was outed as the author of sexy, self-aggrandizing stories on a Scottsdale Website. Here's Quayle's ad, along with Andy Cobb's terrific parody:

Down here in Florida, let's skip over the biggest fraudster in the history of Medicare who may soon be our new governor. After all, his $1.7 billion crime (but who's counting?) was nice, clean white-collar stuff. The Republican candidate for Florida's 25th District (Miami) is notable for a 2002 incident in which he allegedly rammed a delivery truck with his own car to stop the truck from delivering a political opponent's campaign literature. He's got some white-collar problems of his own, too. This is one House seat the Democrats think they might pick up.

For a bad moment during the campaign, Arizona's Jan Brewer had a super-embarrassing live meltdown in her opening statement in her one and only debate. I guess we should be thankful when a politician is at a complete loss for words:

...Later Brewer "explained" that she only participated in the debate to qualify for $1.7 millions in public funds for her campaign. I guess that meant she didn't need to prepare.

For another bad moment, you might want to go to Maine, where the Times reported,

Paul LePage, the Republican candidate for governor in Maine..., walked out of his own news conferenceAnn, got permanent-resident tax exemptions on homes in both Maine and Florida last year, a violation of tax law. Monday in Augusta after reporters asked whether his wife was a permanent state resident.... Later in the day, Mr. LePage was caught cursing on camera when a reporter asked whether his children had paid in-state tuition at a college in Florida. The questions stemmed from a report in the Kennebec Journal last week that Mr. LePage’s wife,

Barney Frank's opponent, Sean Bielat, didn't help his case any when he told the Boston Herald that gays are just like short people -- neither has a right to serve in the military. As the Herald's Edward Mason observed,

Hmm. ... On the other hand, vertically challenged people are not forced to pretend they’re tall, then drummed out once it’s discovered they’re short in spite of their service record.

Meanwhile, in Rhode Island, it's hard to say how much Democratic gubernatorial nominee Frank Caprio helped himself by saying, upon learning that President Obama would not make an endorsement in the contest, that the President could "take his endorsement and shove it."

But for the worst moment of this campaign season, I'd pick Texas Republican congressional candidate Stephen Broden who, the Dallas Morning News reported, said

he would not rule out violent overthrow of the government if elections did not produce a change in leadership. In a rambling exchange during a TV interview, Broden, a South Dallas pastor, said a violent uprising 'is not the first option,' but it is 'on the table.'

To name a few.

The Commentariat -- October 27

Vice President Biden & President Obama speak about unprecedented efforts across the Federal Government to protect victims of domestic and sexual violence in an event marking Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Somebody should make Rand Paul & his goons watch this:

The smile, affable and empty, could be that of a small-town gas-station attendant or a hired assassin. -- Robert Draper, describing White House Communications Director Robert Gibbs in a profile for GQ

"Thoughts vs. Actions." David Leonhardt of the New York Times: President Obama & members of his economic team indicated they knew all along what to do to reduce unemployment, but they evidently didn't have the will to actually do it. Leonhardt concludes, "... given what the polls are showing now, it’s a safe bet that Democrats would choose a different strategy if they had a second chance." ... In a more expansive article, Leonhardt demonstrates when & why the Administration dropped the ball on jobs recovery; as usual, the Senate is implicated, too.

With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions. This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages. -- Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in Citizens United v. FEC

... David Savage in the Los Angeles Times: "Kennedy and the high court majority were wrong. Because of loopholes in tax laws and a weak enforcement policy at the Federal Election Commission, corporations and wealthy donors have been able to spend huge sums on campaign ads, confident the public will not know who they are, election law experts say. Corporate donors have been able to hide their contributions despite the opposition of shareholders and customers — the very groups cited by Kennedy." ...

... Really? Michael Luo & Griff Palmer of the New York Times: "Even with a recent surge in fund-raising for Republican candidates, Democratic candidates have outraised their opponents over all by more than 30 percent in the 109 House races The New York Times has identified as in play. And Democratic candidates have significantly outspent their Republican counterparts over the last few months in those contests, $119 million to $79 million." Ah, Here's the Catch: "Republican-leaning third-party groups, however, many of them financed by large, unrestricted donations that are not publicly disclosed, have ... pour[ed] more than $60 million into competitive races since July, about 80 percent more than the Democratic-leaning groups have reported spending."

CW: It's impossible this year to come up with a "Worst Congressional Candidate in the Nation," but Michael Crowley of Time points to one tea party favorite from North Carolina named Ilario Pantano. Pantano is running a tight race against seven-term Blue Dog Mike McIntyre, who has previously won his races by wide margins. Among Pantano's qualities: (1) "a Manhattan-born former Goldman-Sachs trader"; (2) "he's only lived in the district six years"; (3) "in 2005, Pantano, a former U.S. Marine, emptied two M-16 clips -- or up to 60 rounds  --at two unarmed Iraqis in his custody. He was charged with murder and faced the death penalty, but the charges were dismissed. The investigating officer did call the episode 'a disgrace to the armed forces.'" Don't quit here. Crowley has more on Pantano.

So Not Ready for Primetime. Chris Carl of WDEL Radio, Delaware: "The Christine O'Donnell campaign is apologizing to WDEL after it demanded that video of an O'Donnell appearance on "The Rick Jensen Show" be destroyed and threatened a lawsuit if it wasn't.... O'Donnell also told show host Rick Jensen that she would sue the radio station if the video was released.... O'Donnell's campaign manager, Matt Moran, called WDEL and demanded that the video be immediately turned over to the campaign and destroyed. Moran threatened to 'crush WDEL' with a lawsuit if the station didn't comply." Here's the AP story.

California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman endorses her opponent, former California Governor Jerry Brown:

... Elsewhere in California, a Republican Candidate Sends a Stinkbomb. Jeremy Jacobs of the National Journal: "Republican Van Tran, the upstart challenger to Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), is betting on voters sniffing out his opponent's struggles -- literally. Tran is sending out a scratch-and-sniff direct mail piece attacking Sanchez that features a hideous odor emanating from it."

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: "Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller lied to his former employer several times about using others’ computers for political purposes in 2008 before he finally told the truth, according to documents released Tuesday by the Fairbanks North Star Borough in response to a court order in lawsuits brought by two media outlets." The article links to related documents. The Anchorage Daily News story, which is extensive, is here. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's statement pretty well sums up the whole story:

The bottom line is Joe cheated, he lied, tried to cover it up, lied again, then finally got caught and had to admit it, just as he lied to Alaskans when he initially denied any problems with his employment at the Borough, claiming his record was 'exceptional' and 'second to none.'

American Exceptionalism. If you don't vote for me for President Senator, the U.S. will become a poor, communist dictatorship. This could be the warmest, fuzziest ad in the history of scare tactics. Way to go, Marco!

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president. -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

... CW: perhaps, like me, you didn't notice that there's nuance to Sen. Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Party of "No." Michael Crowley of Time finds nuance, but it doesn't make much difference. ...

... Paul Kane of the Washington Post profiles Minority Leader John Boehner. CW: I am linking this only because it is being described throughout the blogosphere as a "must-read." Still, I will not be reading it.

Greg Miller of the Washington Post: "An intense military campaign aimed at crippling the Taliban has so far failed to inflict more than fleeting setbacks on the insurgency or put meaningful pressure on its leaders to seek peace, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials citing the latest assessments of the war in Afghanistan."

A Perfect Libertarian Moment

Maureen Dowd segues from a brief riff on the misogyny of Kentucky's Republican senatorial nominee Rand Paul to an appreciation of Rolling Stones rock star Keith Richards, whom Dowd describes as "a consummate gentleman."

The Constant Weader stuck with Paul:

Let's talk about that other consummate gentleman -- Rand Paul -- with whom you began. It was one of Rand Paul's county campaign coordinators -- a man named Tim Profitt -- who stomped the head of a woman wearing glasses whom his colleagues had wrestled to the pavement.

One of those colleagues has tentatively been identified as also being associated with Paul's campaign.

Rand Paul himself knew Tim Profitt. The Huffington Post posted a picture of the two men arm-in-arm.

Paul boasted, in a full-page Lexington Herald-Leader ad that Profitt was among a group of people who had endorsed him.

The victim, Lauren Valle, said this to reporters: "The Rand Paul campaign knows me and they have expressed their distaste for my work before. They surrounded me. There were about five of them, they started motioning to each other, and they got behind me." Valle says her partner heard the men say, "We're here to do crowd control and we might have to take someone out."

Now, let's look at what candidate Paul had to say to Fox "News": "… And there was a bit of a crowd control problem." Paul didn’t condemn the violence. He didn't offer an apology to the victim. He didn't acknowledge that the man who stomped Valle’s head was one of his campaign coordinators. But he did volunteer that bit about crowd control.

 As a libertarian, Paul believes people should not just fend for themselves. They should also organize themselves socially to take care of problems. Instead of bringing federal money to Kentucky to help fund clinics to deal with serious drug problems, Paul has said local churches should counsel drug abusers. That’s a philosophy that well might spill over into "crowd control." Instead of depending on paid law enforcement, a campaign could "work together" to deal with "undesirables" – like MoveOn’s Lauren Valle.

I suspect that if some intrepid, fast-moving Kentucky reporters put their minds to it, they could uncover evidence -- before November 2 -- that Rand Paul or his campaign "deputized" Tim Profitt & perhaps others to handle "crowd control." This meant, to some in the Paul campaign, that they would muscle out MoveOn volunteers and other "liberal" demonstrators.

The evidence so far is that Tim Profitt did not act on his own. Sure, after Paul's disastrous interview, the campaign reversed course & disowned Profitt. But I'd guess Profitt is just a sacrificial bigfoot. I suspect Profitt did what he thought he was told to do, and he got carried away doing it. In the heat of the moment, that kind of thing will happen, especially when the deputies are overly-enthusiastic amateurs.

The stomping of Lauren Valle's head was a perfect libertarian moment. It was a perfect tea party moment. It is what you get when you "get the government off your back." You get vigilantism. And that is what the perfect gentleman Rand Paul proposes to promote if he goes to Washington.