Fiorina Campaign: A Teachable Moment
There is a heated three-way battle in California for the Republican senate nomination. Tom Campbell, Chuck Devore, and Carly Fiorina. I’m aware of the whole thing, and paying attention largely because of the ridiculous demonsheep ad put out a few months ago by Fiorina.
I’ve heard a couple of Carly’s interviews, and at least one debate between all three of them. After the debate, I walked away feeling like Fiorina was a little bit immature – having listened to her petulantly repeat several consecutive times “Did you hear what I said?”
As far as I’ve been able to tell, Carly has mostly been going after Campbell in her negative ads, demonsheep being the most obvious. Today, however, from the Fiorina campaign came this gem:
. @chuckdevore predicted doubling in polls due to deceptive ballot title. It worked, but he’s still a distant third. @carlyforca in lead!
I believe what her campaign is referring to is this:
“Ballot titles matter a lot in California,” DeVore said at a Family Action PAC luncheon at the Pacific Club in Newport Beach. “They called me a California state assemblyman. That’s like saying Chuck DeVore’s a thief. My actual title is assemblyman/military reservist. In our internal polling, that change alone doubled my support, when people found out I was not merely a scum-sucking politician.”
I’ve said “campaign” twice because I don’t want to impune the character of Fiorina herself if she wasn’t the one who wrote the tweet knocking Devore’s military service. However, it is completely unacceptable and out of line. My guess is that the staffer who was running her twitter feed this afternoon got the bright idea to attack Devore on his military credentials, because it seems to be working in Connecticut.
Richard Blumenthal, running for US Senate in CT, and currently the Connecticut AG, has been lying about having served in the Vietnam theatre of operations. At the very least, he has on multiple occasions misplaced prepositions to suggest he was actually in country and never bothered to make any attempt to correct the record. Until the NYT called him out.
Just a guess, but I think someone from the Carly campaign saw this going on, and decided to make a nasty comment about Devore’s service, hoping it would get some attention from the media and knock him down a peg or two. I don’t want to make too big of a deal out of a single tweet, but you better have some damn facts if you want to question the military service of one of our men still in uniform. The Fiorina campaign should use this as a teachable moment, and the staffer should be made to personally apologize to Devore. Anyone unable to see how incredibly offensive and disrespectful it is to refer to Devore’s military title as “deceptive” should be fired.
Update 1: The Devore campaign has responded to the tweet.
Update 2 (5/21): Redstate has a post, with additional information about this – and it seems to be getting worse for Firoina
See, in California people get to put a descriptor on their ballot line item describing who they are. Carly put “business executive”, even though she hasn’t been one since 2005. She really does not want Chuck DeVore to have “military reservist” on his line.
Fiorina’s campaign, when contacted, said DeVore is not a military reservist.
This is no longer a teachable moment. This is classless and contemptible denigration of our brave military from someone who aims to serve in the chambers of the United States Senate.