Thursday, October 11, 2007

Kelty Campaign - A Bunch of Amateurs

From the day the primary ended, the Kelty campaign has been full of mishaps and bad decisions. For whatever reason, they have been completely ineffective at controlling their candidate and his supporters. From their terrible response to the campaign finance issue led by Jim Bopp to this latest cake blowup, Kelty supporters and insiders have done a disservice to their candidate. Every candidate has flaws and it's the job of the campaign staff to accentuate the positive characteristics of the candidate while minimizing the exposure of his flaws. Can anyone think of another campaign that has failed in such miserable fashion?

People that have known Matt for a long time have told me that they are not necessarily surprised by his slight honesty/exaggeration problem so this shouldn't have been news to his campaign either. Yet day in and day out their candidate trots out in front of the microphone and spits out fodder for people like me. A good campaign staff does not allow that to happen. Of course every campaign will make mistakes and sometimes even one can sink you (i.e. George Allen's macaca moment), but to repeatedly be on the negative side of the news cycle is inexcusable.

And his supporters have done things that also make you wonder what they hell they were thinking? The night Kelty was arrested there was a courthouse rally where his supporters were chanting "Steve Shine Should Resign - Shame On You" despite the fact that Shine was the only political insider defending Kelty on a daily basis. Then they plaster Congressman Souder's face on the toilet paper of Kelty's cake when he's the only elected official supporting Kelty. And then you post pictures of it on the internet!?!

Tom Henry's choice for campaign manager, Joe Fox, has done an excellent job and has made the right decisions nearly every step of the way. Kelty can call it the status quo, the good ol' boys or whatever he wants but the truth is while there might not be a "right" way to run a campaign there damn sure is a wrong way, and it's likely that the Kelty campaign will be a textbook case...

8 comments:

Eric White said...

Since everyone likes to have their own little conspiracy theories, here is mine.

I don't think that there is any way that one campaign can continually mess up this bad. There is either:

1.) Operatives working in the campaign that are intentionally causing blunders for Matt (i.e. taking pictures of the cake and putting them online), or

2.) This is all part of the grand scheme to make Kelty look like he is being persecuted, and there are several people in on it including folks at the newspapers and TV stations.

Hey, with the stuff that I've seen thrown out for consumption during the election, why not?

Parson said...

There has been some pretty bad judgement displayed by the Kelty supporters.

Jeff Pruitt said...

I'm sure everyone realizes the above was not Dan Turkette. I don't allow anonymous comments for a reason. Now I understand that anyone can get a google account under any name but I had hoped that before someone actually went through with it they would see how juvenile and pathetic it was.

Guess I was wrong. I would appreciate it if everyone could show a little respect for everyone else (or at least this blog) by refraining from using someone else's name when posting.

Dan Turkette said...

I missed it. Someone has been posting as me on quite a few blogs. 3rd grade antics.

Dan

steve said...

Unfortunately, AWB entreats such juvenility. But at least he, presumably, posts under his name. Anonymous/pseudonymous comments are tiring.

Rachel said...

Joe Fox, Tom Henry and the entire staff have been running a very professional and experienced campaign. They deserve much credit for the work they have been doing over the past few months, especially when we consider they started off late.

John Good said...

Tom Henry has refused to attack Matt Kelty's "mis-steps". . .what better endorsement could you get?

David C Roach said...

this is the funniest post i've read about the kelty campaign to date:
http://gloriaforthirddistrict.blogspot.com/2007/09/kelty-crucified-for-campaign-finance.html
giggle!