Republican US Senate candidate Pat Toomey will make an appearance Saturday at the Luzerne County GOP Headquarters, 41 S. Main St., Wilkes-Barre at 4:30 PM. Sorry, the Penn State game starts at 3:30 so I will be occupied.
If you answer a knock on the door in Avoca or Duryea tomorow morning it just might be Congresman Paul Kanjorski. He has been doing more of these type of events lately.
In 2006 Virginia Senator George Allen reacted to a guy from the Democratic campaign that was following him around with a video camera by calling him a name (slur) that I had never heard before. The resulting storm sunk his reelection.
Since that happened just about every campaign in the country has employed people to follow around the other candidate with a video camera hoping to come up with a similar pot of gold. The TL reports that the Paul Kanjorski camp paid a guy $10,000 to follow around Lou Barletta hoping to catch Mayor Lou saying something stupid.
The videographer, identified as Joe Van Wie of Agapic Films of Scranton, was observed taping Barletta at campaign rallies and fundraisers...Van Wie may have been able to track Barletta because he signed up to be a Barletta campaign volunteer.
This has become an common campaign tactic so there was no need for subterfuge. If a candidate is speaking at a public event it's fair game to videotape it. Chris Carney's camp also had a videographer following around Chris Hackett.
Sights on Pennsylvania has much more about how this affected the Barletta campaign even to the point of refusing to give me Lou's schedule because they didn't want to give a heads up to the video guy. Bad move. I've had various candidates tell me that people showed up at an event because they read it on my blog. The video guy would have found him anyway.
Republican challenger Marina Kats is talking up the possibility that U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz (PA-13) will take on Arlen Specter in the 2010 Senate race. Allyson ran for Senate in the 2000 primary for Rick Santorum's seat but Ron Kink won the nod and the people of Pennsylvania got klunked and we were stuck with the Senator from Virginia for another 6 years. In 2000 the clear choice was Allyson Schwartz She would have made her differences with Santorum clear instead of saying "me too" and would have excited the Democratic base. In the end Gore won the state and Klink lost by 5% after being outspent 7:1. If we had a real Democrat that talked about important issues instead of the hot button nonsense things may have been different.
She has a prized seat on the Ways and Means Committee so it would be a tough decision to give that up.
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Update: I asked Allyson's spokeperson about this, her reply
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"Allyson loves her job in Congress. She's got a great seat on the most powerful Committee in Congress - Ways and Means - where she will have a real role in pushing for healthcare reform next Congress in a Democratic Administration."
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