Meuser's campaign says Hackett broke his promise

Hackett Starts Negative Campaign Against Dan Meuser



Breaks promise to run a positive campaign as his campaign gets desperate

With a little over a month to go before Election Day, Chris Hackett broke his promise to run a positive campaign by attacking Conservative Republican Dan Meuser with a misleading letter from a supporter and in a press release.

On the day Dan Meuser officially entered the race for Congress, Chris Hackett told the Times Leader:

“I would like to congratulate him on his decision to run for Congress. I look forward to a positive campaign and primary.” (Times Leader, October 10, 2007)

After months of trailing Dan Meuser in fundraising, grassroots organization, and endorsements from national leaders like Senator Rick Santorum and Lou Barletta and local leaders in every county, Chris Hackett has broken his promise by launching a negative campaign.

Hackett supporter, Mark Zimmer launched a ridiculous and negative attack attempting to misrepresent an immigration issue at Dan’s company more than 13 years ago. That attack was followed by a negative press release that quoted Hackett’s campaign manager attacking Dan personally and negative comments by Hackett’s deputy campaign manager in area newspapers today.

In a letter prompted by Zimmer’s attacks, Pride Mobility chief counsel disputed the misrepresentations contained in Zimmer’s letter attacking Dan Meuser and Pride.

“The fact is that more than 13 years ago 3 illegal aliens defrauded Pride Mobility by providing our business with false identification.” Pride Chief Counsel Joe Burke said. “The assertion that there were more illegal immigrants is absolutely false.”

“Pride took responsibility and assured employment verification practices were immediately improved, so that a similar circumstance could never happen again. Contrary to Attorney Zimmer’s speculation, Pride never paid a $41,000 fine, in fact we paid a $23,000 settlement of administrative costs for the 3 illegals and additional records of American workers who were legal citizens, but did not have the additional identification required by the I-9. That is the sum and substance of the entire matter.”

“We continue to devote essential resources to assure that our employee hiring practices are of the highest caliber. Included among our innovations were the establishment of employee background checks, substantially increasing the number of skilled professionals devoted to human resources, personal interviews and the new BASIC PILOT Program.” Burke said.

Campaign Manager Eric Wallace said. “Chris Hackett’s ploy for political gain will not silence Dan Meuser. Dan will continue to speak out on behalf of small businesses and workers in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania and fight to prevent illegal aliens from victimizing our economy.”

“Chris Hackett finds himself losing this campaign by every measure and now he is beginning what looks like is going to be more than a month of unsubstantiated negative attacks,” Wallace said. “The people of the 10th District deserve better than Chris Hackett’s negative campaign.”

“Chris Hackett should have kept his word to run a ‘positive campaign and primary”. We will continue to talk about the issues like Dan’s experience of creating jobs, advocating for seniors as well as his conservative principles and we will aggressively defend ourselves against Hackett’s negative campaign. ”