The Source

Change You Can Believe In?

What the Heck is Wrong with Walker Hamilton?

We don’t know what it looks like when Walker Hamilton is on his game, because he’s surely off of it. His latest video got fact checked by the Kansas City Star, and Carnahan’s campaign had to back away from some factually incorrect claims in a rather embarrassing fashion. That inspired us to become one of the few groups brave enough to venture into Robin Carnahan’s youtube channel, a desolate wasteland of mostly ignored videos, just to see what they’re up to.

The channel’s early entries are mostly filled with short clips of useless political platitudes... So really, no different from what her campaign was doing for months.

The boringness is punctuated only by occasional moments of insanity, such as Mindy Mazur’s ‘60 second campaign update’ which inexplicably stretches on to one minute and thirty eight seconds. It might not have been so egregious if the video wasn’t so obsessively focused on the 60 seconds theme, throwing it in your face by attaching clock noises to the video, making the letters to ‘60 seconds’ inexplicably appear on what seems to be a row of microphones (weirdest special effect ever?) and so on. At 53 seconds (which is actually the 1:15 mark) they declare victory and then continue updating people about the campaign, which seems to defeat the entire purpose of brevity.

Then there’s this video, which should win some kind of award. It’s titled 28 Days Later.

28 Days Later is the name of a British zombie movie, which is inexplicably combined with visual effects from the movie The Matrix (the scrolling, green faded characters). The inevitable metaphorical implication is that the oil spill is all part of an enormous computer simulation created by brain eating zombies. The trifecta is completed by the inane addition of rainstick sound effects, random drum beats and whizzing noises, which we can only presume were recorded live in Carnahan’s campaign office.

Political insiders suggest that her next campaign video will be named “Waterworld Battlefield Earth” and will star Robin Carnahan as an Avatar fighting to protect the environment all to the tune of a synth-beat improv done by 90’s New Age composer Yanni.

If Walker Hamilton spent as much time making incomprehensible movies using the built in effects from old versions of iMovie as he does on Twitter, maybe all the movies wouldn’t look like middle school class projects.

Mr. Dooley, Will You Please Stop Being Corrupt? Dooley: No

Back in October KMOV exposed how Charlie Dooley was using police detectives as personal drivers, and now the story is back under public scrutiny. This sense of entitlement and willing abuse of public authority isn't just been an isolated instance - it's part of a persistent aroma of scandal and corruption that surrounds St. Louis County government.

Not long ago, Jake Wagman of the Post-Dispatch revealed some details on Dooley patronage: the County purchased and pays for the personal use of 34 cars, mostly for top County employees. The laundry list of cars includes hybrid sedans and SUVs with prices of up to $31,542. Taxpayers can add the cost of insurance, maintenance and fuel to their bills. Next time you see a top county official driving to a Baskin-Robbins to pick up an ice cream cone, you can have the warm and fuzzy satisfaction of knowing that your tax dollars are subsidizing his personal activities.

One county employee called getting a free car for personal use a "fringe benefit." If that's a fringe benefit, what are the normal benefits?

Wagman's story makes it clear that this practice is in no way normal - one official from another county remarked that "It does seem like an awful lot of cars." It is an awful lot of cars. It's one thing to let county mechanics or maintenance staff use a car for official purposes, it's entirely another to give county administrators with six figure salaries free cars. That’s called patronage.

Every month it seems like there's some new scandal. How long is this going to go on?

Skelton Votes One Way, Talks Another

Ike Skelton's vote for cap and tax is undoubtedly going to dog his campaign in his upcoming re-election effort. In the current Congress he has voted with Nancy Pelosi 95% of the time, well above the average Democrat, placing him solidly in Pelosi's camp. So much for Ike Skelton the moderate. 

As Skelton tries to navigate finding a way to get re-elected, he has resorted to adopting a Liberal identity crisis: voting like a die-hard Liberal, and talking like a moderate. We don't think his district will fall for it.

The most recent contradiction comes from his recent letter to the EPA, criticizing it for perceiving a 'Congressional intent' to regulate greenhouse gases Skelton argues that it is impossible for the EPA to read Congress' intent, except that it is: Ike Skelton voted for cap and tax.

If a Congressman's votes don't demonstrate his intent, what does?

Democratic consultant Peter Fenn said that Ike Skelton "is looking over his shoulder," which is perhaps a euphemism for Jonathon Prouty's evaluation, that Skelton faces "a growing realization that [he] is way too liberal for the district."

It doesn't matter how many angry letters you write. If you vote the wrong way, you're still the wrong representative for you district.

Walker Hamilton Tweet of the Day

The Walker Hamilton Tweet of the Day feature is designed to highlight the online adventures of Robin Carnahan’s Online Director. Today’s Tweet is...

@SmartyMcFly I'm holding a bunch of gas in my ass just for you. The discomfort is worth it. 5:47 PM Oct 9th, 2009 via Tweetie in reply to SmartyMcFly

Tommy Sowers' Environmental Extremism, Hollywood Lobbyist Ties

It hasn't been a good past week for Tommy Sowers. After finding out Tommy Sowers was getting crushed in the polls by a 50 point margin by Jo Ann Emerson, the friendly environmental extremists at the League of Conservation Voters decided to step in and conduct their own survey. The move should clarify two things in our minds, neither of them positive:

First, Sowers had previously won a coveted 2009 Clown Award, in part because he said he would refuse to adopt a position on cap and tax until after he was elected. We know from his New York fundraisers with banking executives that he has no problem with talking out of both sides of his mouth, but with the League of Conservation Voters stepping in to do a survey, it's clear who his allies are on this economically disastrous legislation. He should come clean with voters in the 8th District on cap and tax.

Second, it isn't unusual for special interests like the League of Conservation Voters to conduct their own polls, but this timing is suspicious. It has been a precious short time since Emerson released her poll results, and it's still a very long time before the general election. From what we know about the substance and timing of the survey, we would hazard that it was part of a resource allocation strategy, to see if MO-8 was worth investing in. We would guess that it isn't. Is the LCV pulling out?

Meanwhile, Sowers’ finance director is taking a job as Hollywood's top lobbyist as Chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America. Lloyd Smith, ED of the Missouri Republicans, had this to say: “Few people are more out-of-touch to the needs of Southeast Missouri than Tinseltown’s limousine liberals, yet Sowers has tapped Hollywood’s chief Washington lobbyist to raise money for his campaign from the wealthiest of the wealthy.”

For a candidate who just moved to Missouri from New York after trading in his luxury SUV for a pickup truck, this is a disaster on top of a disaster. Sowers has spent months trying to tell people about his pickup truck and dog (a unique messaging strategy, to be sure), but how many Average Joe's have Hollywood's top lobbyist working for their Congressional campaign?

Kansas City Political Grandstanding

A resolution leaked to Tony's Kansas City suggests that the Kansas City Council is primed to vote on a measure condemning Arizona SB 1070 as soon as this Thursday. Apparently having finished resolving every issue important to Kansas City taxpayers, the Council is apparently now dedicating its efforts to other states where it has no influence. 

We expect this measure to be just as effective and meaningful if the Phoenix City Council decided to condemn a piece of legislation in Missouri. Is Kansas City, which is on the tail end of a charge of meaningless resolutions led by twenty other city and local governments, supposed to tip the scale? We don't think so.

This is political grandstanding and nothing more. The resolution includes a list of names for the City Clerk to distribute it to, and most of those are in Missouri which, as we all know, isn't where Arizona Senate bills are drafted. That should say something about the local ambitions of this supposedly national resolution - or perhaps the carelessness of the drafter, who doesn't even bother with sending the resolution to Arizona's state legislatures. Presumably they will hear about it in the Kansas City local news?

The resolution also calls for the involvement of the National Conference of State Legislatures (which already has publicly adopted positions on immigration), but the writer of the preliminary measure might have paid more attention to NCSL's recent report on immigration, which shows that state legislatures have introduced more than 5,000 bills relating to immigration in the past four years. So when the resolution claims that Congress has "the exclusive power over immigration matters," a specious over-simplification, it may very well be biting off more than it can chew.

The resolution asks third parties to help Arizona to create an alternative that "recognizes the need for federal level reform", which entirely misses the point of Arizona trying to bypass the problem of an immigration-incapacitated Federal government. Even if Arizona was inclined to outsource its leadership to the Kansas City Council, this resolution isn't proposing any solutions.

If this resolution does ever see the light of day, all it will do is distract from pressing issues here in Kansas City and Missouri.

Jack Cardetti Leaves Nixon Administration, DNR Salutes by Closing Beach

Jack Cardetti, Nixon's communications director, will be joining the private sector on June 2 to open up the Jefferson City branch of a political consulting shop.  Behind him, he will be leaving bad memories and sour feelings. Those who have been following his career might remember him getting caught up in E.coli-gate, when the Governor's office helped conceal dangerous E.coli levels in the Lake of the Ozarks.

    Cardetti took point for Jay Nixon, loudly and publicly denying the Governor's office involvement or even its awareness of the incident. And then it turned out he was lying.

The political fallout was substantial: a number of Department of Natural Resources (DNR) employees resigned, others were fired and not soon after the DNR was targeted by layoffs. 

    Cardetti never owned up to to his role, and like other Nixon cronies who were involved, somehow managed to keep his job when everyone else was losing theirs. Not only that, he got nice seats to a basketball game in Texas with his boss. Most people would have been fired. Cardetti got rewarded. Who would have thought.

    We're sure the career employees of the DNR are glad to see him gone: the fewer Nixon appointees they have to deal with, the better. Memorializing the occasion, they did what Cardetti never could, and closed a beach because of high E. coli levels. It was a touching moment.

    We're sure that Jack Cardetti is moving onto bigger and more lucrative things, and to be honest, we’re a little bit relieved. He’ll do less harm in the private sector.

Anti-Incumbent, or just Anti-Democrat?

Patrick Tuohey of the Missouri Record has put together a great piece that is worth reading. Taking on the Missouri Democrat Party's spokesman Ryan Hobart, he suggests that recent political trends in Missouri aren't about getting rid of incumbents; they’re all about getting rid of Obama's acolytes.

Tuohey writes:

Let's examine that "trend of rejecting Washington insiders" as it pertains to Missouri.

-Democrats could not find anyone to run against incumbent Republican Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R).
-Tommy Sowers has no poll numbers to show that he is coming anywhere near incumbent Republican Rep. Jo Anne Emerson (R).
-Liberal Kansas City tabloid The Pitch wonders if the man challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Sam Graves (R) is on a "suicide mission."
-While a horde of candidates try to out-conservative each other in the 7th Congressional District primary, it is an accepted fact that this seat will remain Republican.

While there's no apparent sign that the trend is affecting Republican prospects for the 2010 General Election, it seems to be affected Missouri Democrats in spades. Tuohey summarizes:

If this is an anti incumbent election in Missouri, I can't imagine what a "safe" year is like.  Missourians aren't looking to defeat incumbents or Washington insiders.  It is more accurate to say that a state that did not vote for President Obama in the first place is eager to retire as many of his supporters as they can.

The full article is definitely worth a read, and not just because his analysis was today corroborated by professional political forecaster Larry Sabato, who also points to Obama rather than incumbency as the force that will help Republicans get elected:

Another place where anti-Obama sentiment has tilted a Senate contest is the Show Me State. If this were 2006 or 2008, we’d bet on Secretary of State Robin Carnahan to pick up the Senate seat of the retiring Kit Bond (R). But instead, it is likely to go to a senior House Republican, Roy Blunt, father of one-term Gov. Matt Blunt (2005-2009).

Those must be tough words to hear, but we haven't seen any signs that local Democrats are coming to terms with the political landscape in this election. That would certainly explain why their candidates seem to be stumbling with their messages.

How Not To Use Twitter

Meet Walker Hamilton. Here's his LinkedIn profile. Here's his Twitter.

He used to work for Barack Obama's campaign, but now he's the online director or “web guru” for Robin Carnahan’s Senate campaign. If you’ve been watching them on the web, you probably know that he hasn’t been doing a very good job. That might have a lot to do with the amount of time he’s spent on Twitter.

You see, Walker Hamilton has a very colorful and history of Tweets, which provide a unique look into what the Carnahan campaign does when it’s not campaigning. For one, it seems like a lot of alcohol is involved.

We’ve downloaded thousands of his tweets and we’re creating a new feature: The Carnahan Campaign Tweet Of The Day. Whenever we feel like it, we’ll put up one of Walker Hamilton’s tweets. His cheerful, inane and mostly inappropriate commentary will help us all pass the time until election day.

@JimBarnthouse I <3 derby bruises. You shoulda seen @mirandom's ass a while back... 10:05 AM Jan 14th via Tweetie

Walker - we look forward to months of amusement. Robin – where do you find these guys???