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The $300,000 payment to Allied Berton LLC was the subject of an investigative story last night by WBAL-TV reporter Jayne Miller. Neither Ehrlich nor his campaign has so far explained the questionable payments or pledged not to employ similarly unethical and illegal tactics this year.
Monday, October 18, 2010
No Bussing in the Homeless for You!
From what I've been told by friends, in the second debate between them (a debate I did not watch, by the way - no need after seeing the Titanic hit the iceberg in the first debate) Governor O'Malley tagged former Governor Ehrlich with the "Bussing in Homeless Folks from Philadelphia to Work the Polls Handing Out Fake Ballots on Election Day 2006" debacle.I bring this up now for the simple reason that twice over the past four or five days I've been asked if I was behind, or had anything to do with, that disaster.
Excuse me? How could anyone suspect such a thing...unless this is what they are being told by certain folks in order to keep all campaign related heat on me.
Dear reader, please do not allow anyone to taint my bad name by tying me to that exercise in lunacy.
To begin with, while I ran pretty much unbridled in the political universe for the better part of 20 years before being...uh, discovered...the blanket of anonymity on the Bussing Escapade was blown in - what? - 15 minutes. Hell, everyone knew that scheme was perpetrated by Team Ehrlich before the last vote in the 2006 O'Malley victory was even counted.
Secondly, for people who don't know the time line, I was long gone from the Cult of Bob by the time the Bussing Debacle occurred. You can look it up.
Although I'm not sure exactly who in Ehrlich World was responsible for the Bussing Mishap...I have heard it was once and again Ehrlich campaign Political Director, Bernie Marczyk. Regardless, I now offer comment on why the Bussing Disaster WAS a Disaster...rather than a successful footnote that may or may not have been discovered years later. Further, not that I would EVER condone or perpetrate such tactics, I also offer constructive advice in a sort of 20/20 is hindsight kinda way.
1) First off, I'd have to ask the person behind the Bussing Effort - what do you have against homeless Baltimoreans? Why go to Philly for this masterpiece of subterfuge? Hell, at least some of the Baltimore homeless may actually have been able to find a way to vote for Ehrlich in 2006. And, in that vein, taking advantage of local folks leaves no record of bus rentals on the Campaign Finance Reports with which to be concerned. Seriously, you could have just had erstwhile Ehrlich aide Greg "What the Hell am I doing here?" Massoni track them down and bring them on board with promises of grandiosity equal to his own. It's not like he ever had much of anything else to do.
2) Since you insisted on renting busses to use for underhanded political tactics, however...uh, with tongue in cheek I suggest you may have wanted to, you know, "Slush Fund" the project rather than use official campaign funds. Again, it's much harder to follow money that is not being officially spent. Guess you know that now, though, huh?
3) "Obviously," as you are by now well aware (and probably ashamed to admit), it was not wise to allow the various media outlets to access Bussed-in Homeless Folks. Yeah....some of those homeless folks rather vocally voiced their respective displeasure upon being informed that they'd been "had" by Team Ehrlich. What with being told Ehrlich was a Republican even though the ballots they'd handed out on his behalf were made to look as though he was a Democrat, the Homeless had been made to look foolish. See, you've got to control the media, guys, not let it control you - which, judging from that press mess you've got going this year, is a lesson that you haven't quite gotten. That's a shame.
4) Uh...to me, this is the lesson that is most obvious: You are bussing in homeless minorities from Philadelphia to hand out deceiving ballots in minority districts designed to get minorities who are registered Democrats to vote for the Republican by making it seem as though Ehrlich is in fact - as opposed to merely governing as - a Democrat, right? The absolute last thing you do is have the then Governor's wife, former first lady Kendel Ehrlich, greet these folks as they get off their respective busses. What the Hell were you thinking? That was ian nsane decision of cataclysmic proportiosn. Unless, of course, Kendel, herself, came up with the plan or knew about and/or approved of this tactic.
Hmmm...come to think of it...
So, dear reader, I hope that, no matter what you may hear, you can see why I had no part in Ehrlich's Bussing in Homeless Philadelphians for this fun and electoral profit scheme: It was too inane, laughable, ridiculously executed, and far too amateurish.
And to my friends in the Ehrlich Camp, the sad fact is that you guys are so "obviously" out of your league when it comes to the more nefarious aspects of campaigning. With that being said, please feel free to run any last minute campaign explosions by me before igniting them yourselves. Be it teleporting Martians to the polls as a mere distraction, or cabbing those folks who were CASA de Maryland in the days Governor Ehrlich was funding CASA (and, yes, he was - I attended various CASA events at the request of other Ehrlich Administration officials) to help in voter suppression efforts in the city, I will be glad to offer my advice.
Will said advice help the Ehrlich Campaign recover enough to pull out an election victory? Not likely. But if certain folks are going to whisper that I was responsible for an election trick with which I had nothing to do (the aforementioned bussing), I may as well actually have some input.
It's only fair. And, after all, all's fair in love and war. ; )
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