Fake endorsement backfires on Novick campaign operative

Kari Chisholm FacebookTwitterWebsite

This is a difficult post to write.

So far, the campaign between Steve Novick and Jeff Merkley has been a clean one. Hard-fought, especially in blog comments, but between the two campaigns it's generally been a clean race.

But this week, something's happened and I feel it's important to let you know about it. I don't usually write about my client work, but I'm so disappointed in my friends at the Novick campaign that I'm going to share it with you. (David Steves broke the story on the Eugene Register-Guard's blog here, but the Novick campaign hasn't told him the entire story.)

On Tuesday, the Merkley campaign got an email inviting Jeff Merkley to an endorsement meeting this Saturday for the Portland chapter of the Progressive Democrats of America.

Four days notice is pretty tight for an endorsement meeting, but that was only the first red flag.

The email was sent by the "State Coordinator" of the Progressive Democrats of America.... Liz Kimmerly. Who is Liz Kimmerly? She's a senior staffer for the Novick for Senate campaign.

That's right: The endorsement process by which the PDA would endorse a U.S. Senate candidate is being organized by the staff of one of the candidates. (I've posted a copy of the email after the jump.)

I'm a big fan of the PDA (and a friend of radio host Thom Hartmann, a member of their national advisory board.) So, the Merkley campaign asked me to find out from the national organization if this "endorsement" is for real. So, on Wednesday, I called Tim Carpenter - the executive director of the PDA.

Thankfully, the national Progressive Democrats of America had nothing to do with this. Tim told me that he didn't know that Liz Kimmerly was working with the Novick campaign, nor that she had called for an endorsement meeting. Tim told me "that's not how we do things here". He also told me that Liz was an "overenthusiastic volunteer" who clearly hadn't read the instructions for PDA endorsements -- which include a written questionnaire prior to the interview, and 30 days notice to all local PDA members about the interview meeting.

One more thing: He told me the Portland chapter was only created "48 hours ago". That's right, folks: the Novick campaign not only sought to bamboozle the Merkley campaign, but they were bamboozling the Progressive Democrats of America -- setting up a shotgun chapter of a national organization in order to get their endorsement.

Novick's operatives are so desperate for their first organizational endorsement that they tried to fake one. This is pathetic. And it's sad. Steve Novick is a good man and a great activist, and he deserves better from his campaign. Steve Novick himself would never condone these sorts of dirty tricks. He needs to figure out who on his campaign is responsible, and remove them from his operation.

Before all the Novick partisans here at BlueOregon jump all over this, ponder this: What if the Jeff Merkley campaign had set up a sham organization and an endorsement meeting in the space of a week? You'd all be outraged. And rightly so. We'd have a nuclear meltdown on our hands. As I said, I know Steve Novick is a better man than this. I'm confident that Steve will do the right thing and eject the rogue operative(s) responsible from his campaign.

As for the Progressive Democrats of America, I'm excited that the national wants to start a local chapter. I told Tim Carpenter that I'd gladly help them get off the ground and get organized. If we're going to defeat Gordon Smith, we need a strong local chapter, and the strong involvement of the national PDA in Oregon. That's what makes this so sad: If Novick's operatives had their way, they'd have destroyed the local reputation of the PDA in order to win a cheap shotgun endorsement that's not worth the paper the press release is printed on.

Late today, Liz Kimmerly notified the Merkley campaign (and the Novick campaign, haha) that the Saturday meeting would be simply an informational meeting - rather than the "endorsement" meeting she'd planned before. Funny - that only happened after the Register-Guard started asking questions.

Stay tuned. I'll keep you posted.

###

Here's the original Tuesday email, printed in full...

Subject: Progressive Democrats of America Endorsement
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:27:58 -0800
From: lizkimmerly[at]gmail.com
To: steve[at]novickforsenate.org, jeff[at]jeffmerkley.com, candy[at]candyneville.com

Dear All,

I'm writing to let you know that the Portland chapter of the Progressive Democrats of America will be meeting on Saturday, January 19th to decide on its endorsement for Oregon's US Senate race. You are all welcome to state your case and will be given a 10 minute window to present yourselves to the chapter. Please remember that this will also be a regular business meeting for the chapter and you will need to stick to your time limit.

The address is 131 NW 2nd Ave. Mixing and mingling will begin at 6:30 and the endorsement part of our meeting will begin at 6:45.

Your Participation is Appreciated,
Liz Kimmerly
State Coordinator
Progressive Democrats of America

And the one on Thursday from Liz Kimmerly:

From: lizkimmerly[at]gmail.com
To: [email protected]; jeff[at]jeffmerkley.com; candy[at]candyneville.com
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 1:09 PM
Subject: Progressive Democrats Meeting for Saturday

Dear Candidates,

This is just a reminder for our Saturday meeting of the Progressive Democrats of America. If you have not replied to me with an RSVP, please do so soon. If you can not appear, you are welcome to send someone to speak for you.

Peace,
Liz Kimmerly
State Coordinator
Progressive Democrats of America

And the final one today, after the Register-Guard started asking questions. (Emphasis mine):

Subject: Progressive Democrats Meeting for Tomorrow and Next Month
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:03:42 -0800
From: lizkimmerly[at]gmail.com
To: steve[at]novickforsenate.org, candy[at]candyneville.com, jeff[at]jeffmerkley.com

Dear Candidates,

Please note that not all candidates have responded to me in regard to Saturday's PDA meeting. We will be holding our endorsement vote during next month's meeting. You are still welcome to participate in tomorrow night's meeting. See email below.

Sincerely,
Liz Kimmerly

Unbelievable.

  • Missy (unverified)
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    Steve needs to protect his brand better than that. If he's a different sort of politician, he can't employ a standard, dirty-trick campaign.

    Did anybody see The Daily Show this week with the guy who went to jail for jamming Democratic Party GOTV phones in New Hampshire on election day? He was arguing that everybody does these sorts of dirty tricks. I thought to myself that, no, it is just Republicans who do this stuff. Apparently, I was wrong.

    This stinks.

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    I have said before and will say again, someone with elected responsibility is only as good and as effective as those around them. Without going negative, I have been warning and hinting at the entire negative approach those around the campaign has taken. It was a factor (but not the only one) which made me reconsider my support and look seriously at the Merkley campaign, which I am now a proud supporter of.

    I hope that Novick can change the course of his campaign, and stop the sort of hack, negative misleading approach that some of the more noticeable supporters (with tacit approval of the campaign) have engaged in, which we see more manifestly apparent in what the Novick online netroots organizer has tried to pull here.

    Novick deserves better, the party deserves better, the race deserves better, and Oregonians deserve better.

  • Jack Murray (unverified)
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    Wow, that's a lot more detail than the Register-Guard story. What's telling is that the added detail does not clear the Novick campaign of wrongdoing; in fact, it seems to imply the opposite.

    While there's no sure way to know the outcome of this sham endorsement process, it's clear that the deck had been stacked from the outset of the local group's formation. I don't know of any group that has among its very first items of business the endorsement of a candidate(s) in hotly contested primary races.

    But then again, this is the same Novick campaign that employs an intern named Henry, who will 'do anything, say anything' to elect Steve Novick to the Senate. Apparently his colleague Liz holds the same work ethic, and it is unbounded by conventional ethics.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Assuming this is true, clearly this shouldn't have happened, and I agree that Novick's campaign would have been much better served without it happening. But I would prefer to ask for an explanation first. I hope people can hold their tongues on unproductive comments, too.

  • Harry (unverified)
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    <h2>"Steve Novick is a good man and a great activist, and he deserves better from his campaign."</h2>

    True opinion and statement.

    <h2>"Steve Novick himself would never condone these sorts of dirty tricks."</h2>

    I hold the same opinion that Steve would not do such a thing. Did you verify that opinion with a call to Steve to get his read on this? Was Steve 'unavailable for comment'?

    <h2>"He needs to figure out who on his campaign is responsible, and remove them from his operation."</h2>

    I agree. And he should act quickly.

    Again, did you attempt to contact Steve or his campaign to get his side of this story? Maybe this is the first that Steve has even heard about this?

    It would have been a more complete (and less biased, even though you did put in your disclaimer..thank you) story if you even just had the obligatory 'Steve's campaign did not return calls prior to our publishing this'. Not that you have to adhere to journalistic ethics, you are just a blog... who supports the other guy, as you said.

  • Pat Malach (unverified)
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    You'll have to forgive me, but Kari Chisholm, somebody whose company makes money from the Merkley campaign, isn't exactly a fountain of objectivity in this race, so I'll take the advice of James X and wait for further reporting by actual journalists.

    But this post does raise one question: When you say this is "unbelievable," do you mean like when BlueOregon, run by Head Cook and Bottlewasher and Merkley internet consultant Kari Chisholm, allowed an anonymous blogger to use BlueOregon's front page to attack Steve Novick with a right-wing tax-and-spend talking point -- especially when it turns out that the anonymous blogger is deeply connected to the Democratic party establishment and to an old-guard party establishment legislator who had also previously used BlueOregon's front page to personally attack Steve Novick.

    You mean kind of unbelievable like that?

  • (Show?)

    Key sentence from the Register Guard piece:

    She said the endorsement will be determined by the vote of all PDA members present.

    So in context, 48 hours after the local chapter is formed they call an endorsement meeting in less than 4 days for PDA members around the state to attend in Portland, and the endorsement will be determined by the few that show up at this less than a week old chapter's called for meeting which is chaired by the Novick campaign's online organizer.

  • Jack Murray (unverified)
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    Posted by: James X. | Jan 18, 2008 5:32:21 PM

    I about the unproductive comments part. I also think it would be productive for Steve Novick to look into this matter himself and hold his campaign staff to account for any proven misconduct.

  • Jack Murray (unverified)
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    Posted by: Jack Murray | Jan 18, 2008 5:38:27 PM

    ack...

    I agree with James X.about the unproductive comments part.

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    My gut sense on this is that Kari's right - that Steve Novick wouldn't have gone for a dirty Rovian trick like this. I'm confident that he'll prove us correct by severing his ties to whomever is responsible.

    Obviously Liz Kimmerly's fingerprints are all over this. The question in my mind is who else on the Novick campaign was in the loop on this?

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    I have had this story up on my blog for some time now and I really find it deeply disturbing.

    How complicit is Steve Novick in this huge breach of ethics by his staff? Did Novick know? Did his campaign? Did they put her up to it or just tacitly approve of these immoral tactics? If she is rogue (which I don’t think she is, considering Novick accepted the interview invitation), what actions will they take to hold her accountable for what is clearly an unethical conflict of interest?

    These details about the recentness of the creation of the chapter are even more disappointing than Steves' article. We need to replace the Karl Rove culture in Washington with people that have respect for fair play and who will restore honest and progressive discourse to our nation's capital. With unethical tactics like this it is clear that Steve Novick cannot be trusted with that crucial task.

    If she was acting alone, Novick needs to fire Kimmerly immediately, and if Novick was complicit, voters should punish him for this unethical Rove-like behavior at the ballot box this May.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    And while we're waiting for an explanation from the Novick camp, maybe I can get an explanation from Kari or anyone who wants to chime in: If Merkley could figure this out, why couldn't Steve? I mean, his own senior staffer emailed him directly, telling him that she was holding a surprise meeting to endorse a candidate. Didn't that smell funny to him?

    (I ask for an explanation from Kari because he's already shifted the blame off Novick.)

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    Posted by: Harry | Jan 18, 2008 5:36:08 PM

    I did seek comment from the Novick campaign for my blog piece. They have thus far refused to comment. They have had more than their fair share of opportunities to respond.

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    oh, the mock horror! If only there were an award for mortified concern trolling. I'll let the campaign unravel this one, but a couple of notes of interest on this bit of manufactured outrage:

    There hasn't been an endorsement, but Kari already has it pegged as a fake one. Prescient! To my knowledge Ms. Kimmerly was involved in PDA before coming to Oregon, and as Kari discovered, the chapter was apparently created properly and with the full approval of the national. Yet Kari calls it a sham organization. ?? Moreover, he nominates HIMSELF to create a chapter instead. As if that clears up any suspicion of bias?

    Forgive me if I don't buy the disillusionment surrounded by tabloid rhetoric that doesn't appear to match the facts he was given.

  • Jake Weigler - Novick for Senate (unverified)
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    Wow. We have a good week and the attacks are unleashed on Blue O.

    I will let Progressive Democrats for America speak for themselves on this, though my understanding is substantially different than the one you present Kari.

    On behalf of the Novick campaign I will say this was never an attempt "bamboozle" "fake" or "trick" our way into an endorsement. PDA uses a fully democratic process that allows every member to cast their vote and, as I understand it, every member on their email list in Oregon was contacted. Liz herself will have no role in deciding who is selected and will actually be recused from the voting process.

    Progressive Democrats for America is a national organization, with 2300 members here in Oregon that - to date - has had no state chapter. Liz Kimmerly, our online director, has had a long-standing relationship with PDA prior to joining the campaign and moving back to Oregon. When they approached her about creating a state chapter, she accepted, putting in numerous volunteer hours on her own time to pull it together.

    My understanding of the emails you posted is that the Merkley campaign said that holding the endorsement vote this Saturday would not work for them and so the vote was moved to next month to accommodate them. Apparently that was insufficient as they have now passed these emails on to you to throw attacks at Steve.

    Again, I'd emphasize that Liz Kimmerly (despite your repeated inuendos) has no say in who the chapter decides to endorse and that every members has a vote. I'd hope that everyone interested in starting a PDA chapter in Oregon will show up to this meeting (and the endorsement one next month) to make their voice heard. That democratic process is a far cry from the DSCC and numerous other organizations that have endorsed Merkley without even contacting our campaign.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Oh, and I'll quibble a bit with the term "dirty trick." That seems to me to imply more of a harmful and malicious scheme against an opponent. Again, assuming this is true, it was definitely a trick, and improper conduct, but it was more about creating Potemkin support for one's own campaign rather than trying to sink the opponent. Not that that's any less a disgrace. I just don't know what a more accurate term than "dirty trick" might be. Well, I can come up with one, but it would violate my own "no unproductive comments" advice.

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    Posted by: Pat Malach | Jan 18, 2008 5:37:38 PM

    Right on cue with the negative obfuscating crap flinging to divert attention from the issue, which is that Novick is being harmed by the approach of those around him (officially or unofficially) who signal the direction and set the tone for their supporters, and in this case apparently willing to behave unethically to try and get a wholly compromised "progressive" endorsement which, if history is any indication, while be used by Liz's netroots volunteers to go negative against Merkley with to mislead progressives about Merkley.

    Steve is a solid progressive as is Merkely, and unfortunately those who Steve has around him are not serving himself, his candidacy, the party, the race, or the state well.

  • Jake Weigler - Novick for Senate (unverified)
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    Oh, and I have to add the fact you didn't even bother to call us about this before posting suggests what your true motives are here.

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    TJ:

    If this was a Merkley staffer you would be howling demanding that whoever responsible was fired. Your lack of response just shows your bias.

    You have previously made the argument that the Novick campaign runs a tighter ship than Merkley. These actions just prove that Novick campaign is about shenanigans and doesn't have the ability to seriously take on Gordon Smith.

  • (Show?)

    one other thing--does it seem at all plausible that Kimmerly figured the Merkleu campaign wouldn't recognize her name in the emails? They know who's staffing Nocick at senior levels.

  • Jack Murray (unverified)
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    Posted by: Jake Weigler - Novick for Senate | Jan 18, 2008 5:55:23 PM Progressive Democrats for America is a national organization, with 2300 members here in Oregon that - to date - has had no state chapter. Liz Kimmerly, our online director, has had a long-standing relationship with PDA prior to joining the campaign and moving back to Oregon. When they approached her about creating a state chapter, she accepted, putting in numerous volunteer hours on her own time to pull it together.

    If Liz has been involved with PDA for such a long time, she must have known that the PDA endorsement process requires 30 days' notice and a written questionnaire. Why did she botch that, and why did she move to make an endorsement within the very first week of the group's existence? And why didn't anyone know about it? There's still no notice of the meeting on the group's website. None.

    Liz may have done work for this group in her own free time, but it appears that she began mixing business and pleasure without regard for process.

    Jake, do you stand by Liz's actions? If not, how are you going to hold her accountable?

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    Posted by: James X. | Jan 18, 2008 5:44:09 PM I mean, his own senior staffer emailed him directly, telling him that she was holding a surprise meeting to endorse a candidate. Didn't that smell funny to him?

    Exactly. Steve is a good guy, and wants to fight the good fight, but this is a valid point which, Unfortunately for Steve, only comes from building a team of people who can effectively keep you on track. That takes someone with the experience to build that team, know how to lead it, where the red flags are, how to work within a team (while being responsible for it and leading it) to be effective not just as a candidate, but to the real things that ultimately matter, being responsible as an elected official, particularly at this level (United States Senate).

    Steve is there on the issues, is there on the passion for wanting to affect change, but it takes more than that. It takes not being a one man show and takes having the right skill-set to be a team leader and assembling that team and setting the standards, direction, etc.

    That is not to say that Steve is incapable of that, but for me alarm bells went off long ago to take an assessment of who would better serve to take the fight against Smith and have that needed skill set which goes beyond just being bright, wonkish, and heartfelt commitment to effectively bringing about the changes needs at the Federal level for Oregon and the country (which both men share).

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Ok, the Novick campaign's position is that this was completely legitimate, and that Kari is attacking with malice.

    But why does the executive director of the organization say "that's not how we do things here?" Why was this organization set up with the intent to meet about endorsements within a week, if it wasn't created ad-hoc to endorse a candidate? And why do you assume malice? You don't hold yourself to the standard of "involved with a campaign, therefore conflicted," so how can you hold others to that standard?

    Also, there's no way I can keep up with the comments here, so apologies for my comments being so 10 minutes ago.

  • D (unverified)
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    Novick Campaign: Acting defensive is not helping your case.

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    Posted by: Jake Weigler - Novick for Senate | Jan 18, 2008 5:55:23 PM Wow. We have a good week and the attacks are unleashed on Blue O.

    Jake,

    Read the short comment thread (before Kari shut it down) and the comment thread at the linked blog and you'll see that multiple Merkley supporters chimed in in defense of Novick. That's hardly a partisan attack.

    That said, Blue Oregon didn't originate that story. They linked to it from two different sources, one of which was a journalist with the newspaper of record for this state.

  • (Show?)

    This looks pretty lousy, for sure.

    I am curious about the discrepancy between what Kari reports from Tim Carpenter, that the PDA chapter was formed Tuesday or Wednesday (not quite clear when you talked to him, Kari), and David Steves statement at the R-G blog that it was formed a month ago.

    Liz K's last e-mail looks to me like it might not be a response to the R-G but from PDA national. What it describes looks as if it would fit the PDA rules that Tim C describes. Part of what is at stake is rescuing any sort of legitimate PDA endorsement process according to the rules. Clearly Liz Kimmerly couldn't be part of it.

    Since PDA has 2300 members in Oregon, according to information at the R-G blog, I'm not sure the "shotgun chapter" characterization is quite fair -- it looks like Liz K hijacked what might otherwise have been a legitimate chapter formation process. The logic Kari outlines for having one, vis a vis the effort to unseat Gordon Smith existed on Monday as well as today. An Oregon PDA activist writing over at the R-G, who is quite disgusted at the whole thing both as an illegitimate endorsement process from a local PDA point of view and in terms of the Novick campaign, says that "Coordinator" is a real title and that chapters are in fact created by coordinators in the usual order of things.

    Kari's account of his conversation with Tim Carpenter says Tim C called Liz K "an overenthusiastic volunteer." Does that mean she was lying in claiming the title of Coordinator? Or can coordinators be volunteers? In other words, did she hijack a legitimate chapter-forming process in which she had a legitimate role (one that may embarrass Tim C at this point), or was she illegitimately claiming a role that wasn't really hers, in addition to abusing the endorsement process? Again, a comment posted over at the R-G suggests reasons to think Liz K has legitimate & high-level connections with PDA, & indeed it seems Tim Carpenter knew who she is though not some important things she's been doing.

    While I hope it's clear that I do think this was abusive and it reflects badly on the Novick campaign (& at least one of our usual suspects in inter-campaign rancor here is less fastidious than Kari in not accusing Steve himself, over at the R-G), I do have to question your writing Kari when you write of "Novick operatives." As far as you've yet revealed, Liz Kimmerly appears to be one person :->.

    Mitch Gore / Lestat also makes ominous noises about this being characteristic of the campaign in general, linked to comments about rancor on this blog. But are those commenting here really part of Steve's campaign?

    Finally, Kari, I'd suggest that it might be best for PDA if the work of creating a fully fledged, fully legitimate Oregon chapter, able to survive the vicissitudes of wherever this episode and the primary more generally go & be in position to work well in the general, were not handed from someone who does web work for Novick to someone who does web work for Merkley :->.

    I'm not suggesting you'd do anything similar, just that both from the point of view of appearances and of damage control to unified party effort in the general, you might not be the ideal candidate. Surely there's someone who could be found to take over the work who has a more neutral profile?

  • Pat Malach (unverified)
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    "why does the executive director of the organization say 'that's not how we do things here?'"

    Perhaps he's only heard one side of the story so far.

    Remember your earlier post about waiting?

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    The conflict of interest perception alone, much less the clear violation of PDA rules and norms, should have made this move a non-starter. Jake's comment (non-denial denial), lack of judgment in seeing this should have been a no-go form the start, and spin (this got moved because of the Merkely campaign) is troubling, and underscores what I said up-thread.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    one other thing--does it seem at all plausible that Kimmerly figured the Merkleu campaign wouldn't recognize her name in the emails? They know who's staffing Nocick at senior levels.

    Well, "Anastasia Beaverhousen" probably would have been more suspect.

  • Jack Murray (unverified)
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    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 18, 2008 5:50:17 PM To my knowledge Ms. Kimmerly was involved in PDA before coming to Oregon, and as Kari discovered, the chapter was apparently created properly and with the full approval of the national. Yet Kari calls it a sham organization.

    torridjoe: The organization may have been created in compliance with rules and regulations, but it's pretty clear that the intent of the creation of the organization was to quickly endorse a candidate in the Senate race. Why is that pretty clear? Because that was the group's first order of business! Before adopting a charter, before recruiting fellow travelers, before establishing a regular meeting place, and before defining what it means to be a 'progressive Democrat' in Oregon, the group called an endorsement meeting--within the very first week of its existence.

    Kari's conversation with Tim Carpenter makes it clear that such intent is indeed taboo:

    Tim told me that he didn't know that Liz Kimmerly was working with the Novick campaign, nor that she had called for an endorsement meeting. Tim told me "that's not how we do things here".

    Again, the national director recognizes and does not excuse Liz Kimmerly's intent.

    That's a fact.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: James X. | Jan 18, 2008 6:08:24 PM

    Timely and appropriate questions, James. I'm going to edit them slightly and organize them a bit because they do go to the very heart of the matter here.

    1. Ok, the Novick campaign's position is that this was completely legitimate, and that Kari is attacking with malice. But why does the executive director of the organization say "that's not how we do things here?"

    1. Why was this organization set up with the intent to meet about endorsements within a week, if it wasn't created ad-hoc to endorse a candidate?

    2. And why do you assume malice? You don't hold yourself to the standard of "involved with a campaign, therefore conflicted," so how can you hold others to that standard?

    Jake,

    Would you be so kind as to answer each of these questions one at a time?

    Thanks!

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Pat, I am trying to frame things as questions and hypotheticals for now.

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    Kari's account of his conversation with Tim Carpenter says Tim C called Liz K "an overenthusiastic volunteer." Does that mean she was lying in claiming the title of Coordinator? Or can coordinators be volunteers? In other words, did she hijack a legitimate chapter-forming process in which she had a legitimate role (one that may embarrass Tim C at this point), or was she illegitimately claiming a role that wasn't really hers, in addition to abusing the endorsement process?

    I can't speak to the process, etc. which you raise, but it it worth noting that the PDA page for Oregon, on the national site states Liz as the coordinator.

  • (Show?)

    if the national approached Kimmerly first, that makes it awfully hard to charge that the chapter was created under false pretenses, no?

    If the endorsement process is not being properly followed, it should be. And it looks like now it will. The rest looks like faux outrage. Particularly when Steves took time to ding Merkley for flopping around on NCLB, and here at BlueO there were only crickets...

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Jake Weigler - Novick for Senate | Jan 18, 2008 5:55:23 PM

    If every member of the PDA was contacted how do you respond to claims in the comments of the Steves' piece that members of the PDA were not previously contacted.

    Further, it is disappointing that in response to such serious allegations the Novick campaign resorted to its one trick pony, bashing the DSCC. Well, I hate to break it to you Jake but Merkley doesn't employ Chuck Schumer. Your campaign clearly crossed significant moral/ethical lines and Kimmerly should be fired.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    And if I knew my questions would be so formalized, I would have crafted them with a bit more care. Also, I was trying to add levity with the Beaverhousen reference, but I realize it might sound like a cheap shot, so I take that back.

  • Jack Murray (unverified)
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    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 18, 2008 6:20:55 PM

    Don't change the subject, TJ. It looks like your trying to draw attention away from a serious allegation of misconduct.

    What the national branch didn't know at the formation of the group is that Liz is knee-deep in a hotly contested primary campaign. And as the state coordinator, her first action item was to convene an endorsement meeting. Kimmerly should have disclosed to national that she's working for a campaign. But she didn't.

    Instead, she kept that affiliation secret and worked towards a flawed endorsement process--all within a week of starting the group.

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    If something like this were to happen this summer then you can bet that Smith would mop the floor with the culprit, brand the entire campaign as complicit and cruise to reelection.

  • Pat Malach (unverified)
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    Pat, I am trying to frame things as questions and hypotheticals for now.

    Roger that. I was just offering one of the possible answers :)

    It might also be appropriate for BlueOregon to find someone else to cover this story in the future besides the guy who refers to one of the candidates involved as a "client."

    "I'm confident that Steve will do the right thing and eject the rogue operative(s) responsible from his campaign."

    That would be one surefire way to propel this story into the unforeseen future. I can see multiple-post coverage on BlueO now.

    Moreover, high profile knee-jerk demands that someone be fired from his or her job so that one campaign can score political points may be business as usual in politics, but it doesn't exactly reflect a beacon of humanity.

    There are real people involved here, folks. And this time they're Democrats.

  • (Show?)

    Scratching my head on Mr. Weigler's comment,

    My understanding of the emails you posted is that the Merkley campaign said that holding the endorsement vote this Saturday would not work for them and so the vote was moved to next month to accommodate them.

    and ignoring all of the special pleading regarding the truly remarkable coincidence that Ms. Kimmerly apparently decided to form the Oregon chaper of the PDA about two days before she sent the emails offering the candidates four days to respond, the best that I can glean from the text of the emails above:

    Progressive Democrats of America will be meeting on Saturday, January 19th to decide on its endorsement for Oregon's US Senate race

    Just saying, that if I received this email, I would understand it to say that the PDA was going to meet on Friday to decide on its endorsement.

    Hey, that is exactly what it says. But then comes the second email which doesn't address timing at all, and finally on to email #3 which says:

    Please note that not all candidates have responded to me in regard to Saturday's PDA meeting. We will be holding our endorsement vote during next month's meeting.

    So while it indeed changes the date, there is no mention in that email or any others as to the reason.

    So if Mr. Weigler read something else it was not, as he avows, in any of the above emails.

  • (Show?)

    Somewhat off-topic, while I applauded her heartfelt convictions and activism to hold Bush accountable for this administrations mendacity about the war, I find it odd that Cindy Sheehan, whose rather sad public break and attacks on the Democratic Party, as being on the advisory board of the national PDA rather incongruous with the purpose as a grassroots PAC operating inside the Democratic Party, and outside in movements for peace and justice. Perhaps Liz's screw-up may be an electoral blessing in disguise if nobody gains the PDAs endorsement.

  • (Show?)
    There are real people involved here, folks. And this time they're Democrats.

    Giving those involved a pass because they happen to be Democrats is symptomatic of the very "the ends justify the means" mentality that allowed this to happen in the first place! More to the point, it's exactly what the Republicans have been doing for YEARS.

    I'd like to believe that Democrats are capable of holding themselves and their own to a HIGHER moral and ethical standard than the party of Rush Limbaugh, Tom DeLay, An Coulter and the rest of the gang.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    I'm going to join Pat in refraining for now from demands for heads. I think that should come after the facts are more settled.

  • (Show?)

    From the first email Liz sent:

    Please remember that this will also be a regular business meeting for the chapter and you will need to stick to your time limit.

    How many meetings has the less than a week old chapter held so far, regular business meeting or otherwise?

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Although, things seem to be settling pretty fast. TJ, Jake, come back! Shake the snow globe again!

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Pat Malach | Jan 18, 2008 6:30:47 PM

    Considering that the progressive community has condemned these tactics for years and demanded that Karl Rove and the other Republican perpetrators of such dirty electioneering get fired, it is only fair that we apply the standard to our own when they cross the line and engage in unethical tactics.

    Pat you don't seem to be concerned about the real harm perpetrated by the Novick campaign here on real people, members of the Progressive Democrats of America. PDA on a national level is a good organization and did not deserve their hard work to be tainted by such unscrupulous opportunism by the Novick campaign looking to shore up a poor list of endorsers with such a cheap political ploy.

  • (Show?)

    How can the Oregon PDA give a legitimate endorsement for the state-wide race at all given this:

    State Caucus The Oregon State Caucus needs your help in forming. For information, please contact our State Coordinator(s) listed below.

    Only coordinator listed is Liz of the less than week old coordinator?

    So how does this endorsement process work exactly for statewide races?

    Who votes since from their web-page, the state caucus hasn't even been formed?

    Maybe there website needs some serious updating, can anyone even clarify what the membership is, it processes, how it meets, how it votes for statewide race endorsements, how the local chapter works?

  • Pat Malach (unverified)
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    "I'm going to refrain for now from demands for heads. I think that should come after the facts are more settled."

    That sounds a lot like, "Don't worry, you'll get a fair trial before we hang ya."

    That's not what you meant, is it?

  • (Show?)

    Before heads are called for and the Rove name is K-bombed, I think we need some clear answers on a whole raft of issues this seemingly Astroturfed "endorsement" process which raised red flags (rightly so) for the Merkley cmapign are addressed. I would find it highly unikely that Steve would embrace anything or condone Rovian.

    Personally, I have to step away for a few hours from the keyboard, and with luck at least some might be forthcoming when I get back on later tonight.

  • (Show?)

    Ugh... should have read as:

    I would find it highly unikely that Steve would embrace or condone anything Rovian.

  • (Show?)

    Even if Kimmerly has no influence on the endorsement itself, it does seem like a conflict of interest for an online director of a campaign to be involved whatsoever with the process. She should be excluded completely from the endorsement process and that includes setting up the meetings with the candidates. Kimmerly should have just stepped aside and let someone over at Progress for America take the reins on the meetings etc.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Pat, demands for heads are a given. They've already happened. I'm just calling for some time for jets to cool, if I may so recklessly mix metaphors.

  • John-Mark Gilhousen (unverified)
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    Jake Weigler - Novick for Senate stated: as I understand it, every member on their email list in Oregon was contacted

    This is absolutely false. I am one of those members, and receive PDA emails regularly (and as recently as the 15th of this month). I have received none announcing the formation of an Oregon chapter, let alone that a vote was imminent on that chapter's endorsement in the senate race.

    I live in The Dalles, and if given reasonable notice of such a meeting, I would do whatever it took to arrange to be there. That is one important reason why the PDA guidelines for endorsements requires 30 days notice.

    The only public notice of this meeting I've been able to find is on the Novick campaign website. It may not have been an attempt to stack a deck, but it would be difficult to craft a process to more perfectly achieve that result, and certainly creates that impression.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Unfortunately, I have to bow out of this discussion for a few hours. Don't decapitate anyone until I get back, ok?

  • Bill Wh. (unverified)
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    Is it the 15th of March Brutus ?

  • To paraphrase (unverified)
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    I have it on good authority that somebody did something they shouldn't have, and somebody else should have kept them from doing that, or (even if they didn't) then somebody ought to be fired because it reflect poorly on the guy I'm voting against. And I spoke with a well known head of the board of directors, and he confirms that somebody may have done something they shouldn't have without getting somebody else's permission first.

    But Novick's a really nice guy, ran a clean campaign, and I wish him nothing but the best: who cares if he's too short to be elected.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Damn, I should have walked out the door before everything got so pissy. Now I'm leaving.

  • Katie B. (unverified)
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    In my view, this is Merkely is astroturfing outrage at a potential goof that might have looked like it was almost maybe going to happen, but didn't, because when it was called to the attention of the people involved, everybody involved recalibrated and did the right thing. Scandal!

    Carl, you go way down in my esteem for participating in this echo chamber smear. This is Merkely grasping for negative straws because he's beginning to see the writing on the wall. Steve is the better candidate, and the voters are going to see that.

    I was on the fence about whether to show up for the PDA thing Saturday night. No more.

  • Pat Malach (unverified)
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    Steves has updated his report.

    ...the PDA has put the endorsement meeting off for another month and taken Kimmerly off the job of organizing the event. Democratic consultant Moses Ross, who was asked to take that duty over, said he’d been concerned that Kimmerly was trying to rush the endorsement process. But he added that he didn’t think the Novick staffer was trying to rig the process to benefit her boss—even though that could have been the effect. “I don’t sense there were any dirty tricks involved - just enthusiastic activists,” said Ross, who is not involved with the campaigns of any of the Democrats running for the Senate seat held by Republican Gordon Smith.
  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Katie B. | Jan 18, 2008 8:08:03 PM

    The reason why this unethical endorsement process didn't go through is because people strongly objected to Novick's unethical stiff arming tactics.

    Posted by: Pat Malach | Jan 18, 2008 8:19:58 PM

    Just because the person on trial professes their innocence doesn't mean it true. Even if it Novicks claims of innocence are true, the inability for Novick to see the inherent conflict of interest and the ethical quagmire that Kimmerly's actions put him in shows that he is in no way prepared for the rigors of taking on Gordon Smith. If this happened in the general election, Smith would have the entire MSM condemning Novick as a morally challenged hack and would demand Kimmerly's head. We can't afford to nomination such a huge liability with such poor judgment.

  • Scott Jorgensen (unverified)
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    Keep it up, guys. If I were Gordon Smith, I'd be reading this and laughing my ass off......

  • messieur t (unverified)
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    This is a difficult post to write (sigh). Without getting banned (again) by Kari.

    Does anybody think the PDA's endorsement will sway more than 50 voters? Doesn't all this faux outrage jeopardize at least that many votes?

    Too much inside baseball? This is more like two umpires discussing their prostates in a crowded elevator. Way too much information: even if you love baseball.

    Mountain. Mole hill.

    Time to find another child abuse victim to exploit for political gain.

  • (Show?)

    My understanding of the emails you posted is that the Merkley campaign said that holding the endorsement vote this Saturday would not work for them and so the vote was moved to next month to accommodate them. Apparently that was insufficient as they have now passed these emails on to you to throw attacks at Steve.

    Then your understanding of the emails is false.

    The Merkley campaign has never responded to those emails. When we saw the four days notice and the fact that it was being led by a paid staffer of the Novick campaign, we contacted the national chapter.

    We were told by the director that the Portland chapter of PDA was 48 hours old. He also told us that the endorsement meeting wouldn't happen this weekend because it would be a violation of their rules. The change in the meeting had nothing to do with Merkley's schedule and everything to do with the fact that it was going outside the organization's own processes.

    They also had no idea that Liz Kimmerly is employed by one of the potential endorsees.

    It's apparent that had we not contacted them, this sham endorsement process would have gone forward.

    Carla--Netroots Outreach, Jeff Merkley for Oregon

  • (Show?)

    Let me get this straight:

    Liz Kimmerly is being crucified for her conflicts of interest while Kari Chisholm points the finger?

  • Katie B. (unverified)
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    And another thing...

    I can't help but compare this to Merkley going on Huffington Post implying that he's already won a primary. That wasn't ALMOST or MAYBE. That actually happened. No retractions, no backoff. All we got was, "Well, ANYBODY running could equally well say what I said." Anybody who didn't mind misleading the reader.

  • Harry (unverified)
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    " Kimmerly is being crucified for her conflicts of interest while Kari Chisholm points the finger?"

    Yep. That is how operatives work. Especially paid operatives. The good ones light the bomb and walk away. The shrapnel rarely hits them, but if it does, then they are also the victim too.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Stephanie, Harry: Kimmerly can start a blog and write anything she wants. To risk overstretching the blogging metaphor, what Kimmerly is accused of is much more akin to using sockpuppets for the illusion of greater grass-roots support.

    And while we're on that topic, how is it that Kari is astroturfing, Katie? All I've seen is the insinuation that Kari is privately taking pleasure in this news.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Stephanie V | Jan 18, 2008 9:23:37 PM Let me get this straight: Liz Kimmerly is being crucified for her conflicts of interest while Kari Chisholm points the finger?

    Kari Chisholm wasn't involved in a rogue endorsement process.

    Liz Kimmerly was involved in a rogue endorsement process. Not only was she involved in it but she was the coordinator of it.

    See the difference?

    A more relevant comparison would be to compare Liz's ethical choices, as illustrated in this post, with those of her counterpart on the Merkley campaign - Carla.

    Carla cut ties even to the two blogs she'd cofounded (Preemptive Karma and Loaded Orygun) even though nobody demanded it much less asked it. She did it, on her own initiative, to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

  • All the piffle thats fit to print (unverified)
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    A volunteer, Liz Kimmerly, is being crucified? More like "blogofried".

    Matt Wingard is being crucified, by the left and the right. And his parental fitness is being scrutinized by a bunch of asshats who will never meet either one of them. Or care about them.

    To what end? Just to diminish Wingard's chances of winning a seat in the Oregon House. Pure Piffle.

    And real conflicts of interests continue to fly under the B/O radar (last boarding call for the Air Johnson Shuttle, with direct service from Scappoose to Quantico).

    Wonder all about it.

  • (Show?)

    Kimmerly's not a volunteer, to be clear. She's online director, a paid professional position (something I'm happy to say is a new phenomenon, but a spreading one in following elections. Career FYI!).

    Also to clarify this statement: "even though nobody demanded it much less asked it."

    I think suredly there was no doubt in Carla's mind that she'd separate, not least the conflict with the blog's endorsement--but primarily on the basis that you just can't run a private blog and be a candidate's online messenger. The campaigns shut you up. Carla had a looser leash for a couple of weeks it seemed, but that stopped pretty quickly. I know for a fact that Novick's requirement was almost total online silence that isn't on message. It's understood.

    Neither of us really needed to bring it up, it was understood. But I certainly would have asked and then demanded, were it someone less gracious and forthright than Carla.

  • Katie B. (unverified)
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    The astroturfing is all the Merkley partisan posts above that try to make it appear that something actually happened. It didn't! Someone got ahead of themselves, but it was undone before any harm could come of it.

    How about the poster above putting words in my mouth to make it look like I'd acknowledged something unethical had occured? Carl, please delete that post!

    Carl's guilt is in the ponderous staging and careful description of this might-almost-maybe-potential goof, for which there is no evidence whatsoever of unscrupulous intent, to make it seem like it did.

    What the whole thing says to me is that Merkely has gotten the drift that he can't win in a fair fight, so is diving for the gutter.

  • Peter Bray (unverified)
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    Big whoop.

    The only thing interesting about this is to see the two editors of Loaded Orygun dance around their opposing positions!

  • LT (unverified)
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    This is a quote from the Dave Steves blog:

    "A newly formed chapter of Progressive Democrats of America is interviewing three Senate candidates Saturday—including one who is the boss of the chapter’s coordinator. Liz Kimmerly isn’t just the PDA state coordinator in Oregon, a position she accepted a little more than a month ago when the chapter formed. She also does online campaign work for Democratic Senate candidate Steve Novick. Which could make the other invited Democratic candidates, Jeff Merkley and Candy Neville, a little skeptical about whether they’ll get a fair shot at the group’s endorsement. "

    I used that Steves quote so no one would get into whether BO was pulling a fast one.

    I had 2 instant feelings about this when first reading it:

    1) Years ago, Margie Hendricksen was running for Congress against Peter De Fazio, and some women from feminist groups were saying things like "Anyone who doesn't support Margie doesn't support women" with all the vehemence TJ uses in saying things like "There hasn't been an endorsement, but Kari already has it pegged as a fake one. " This was an esp. strange situation because of the women not living in the 4th Cong. District telling women who did live in Eugene or elsewhere in the district they had no right to decide after knowing Peter and Margie a long time which to support---if they "supported women" they would vote for Margie. We all know now how that primary turned out. In the process, the women from outside the 4th district alienated a lot of women who thought they were being bossy. Margie Hendricksen never won major office after that and eventually moved to another state.

    Supporters of statewide candidates need to decide now what their goal is: win the primary and the general, or defeat the opponent? The ordinary folks who have not yet tuned into this campaign are more likely to vote for the disciplined campaign with good ideas than for the campaign which seems more interested in defeating the opponent. I knew a woman in 1996 who was impressed with Gordon Smith because she saw him in a restaurant near her family, and "that poor man's food must have gotten cold but he spoke politely to anyone who came over to his table and interrupted his dinner with his family". That woman's vote counts just as much as the vote of someone who can tell you where the candidates stand on a multitude of issues!

    A friend of mine from Eugene who was working as an affirmative action officer in an agency in 1986 when Peter DeFazio was first elected to Congress after winning the primary. My friend was of the (fairly common, apparently) belief that having voted for both Peter and Margie in previous elections (legislative, county) these people thought Peter had the better temperment and skills to survive in Congress and were going to vote accordingly.

    My friend and I were at a luncheon for a women's group when a discussion of an upcoming state convention led to one young woman at the luncheon saying of the endorsements, "Well in the 4th district, we have Margie" and someone else asking point blank "has the endorsement already been finalized before the convention?".

    At best, Liz K. is an overenthusiastic volunteer who sounds like the young woman at the luncheon all those years ago jumping the gun by saying "in the 4th district, we have Margie".

    Which leads to my second point. To know someone for many years is to know a 3 dimensional person with assets and liabilities. The sort of knowledge which can lead to statements like "really appreciated what she did with---but BOY! did she make a mistake when she_".

    I've known Steve for many years, probably before I knew Jeff Merkley existed. Very bright guy but that doesn't mean I have agreed with everything he said or did. After the campaign started, I will give him credit because we had an email exchange where I told him something he had said once which I had considered stupid (among other things) and he wrote back something like he would have been stupid if he'd said that, but what he thought he said was.....

    I've had a bad feeling for a long time that Steve is very bright but that isn't enough to run for major office. Gordon Smith is in the US Senate at least in part because the Bruggere campaign (which Steve worked on) made some really dumb mistakes and offended some potential voters. There were multiple 3rd party candidates in fall, 1996, and people turned off by the partisans campaigning could chose one of those as a protest. Has Steve ever contemplated what mistakes the Bruggere campaign made and instructed his campaign manager to tell staff and supporters those mistakes are not to be made by his campaign?

    This is a test of Steve and Steve alone. Not his campaign manager or staff, but Steve. Steve is as responsible for the actions of his staff as any other candidate. A true leader would have a long talk with Liz K. and tell her she made the campaign look bad, and then explain to the general public just exactly what happened.

    TJ, Stephanie, and the rest of the Novick backers here should do some soul searching and talk to Steve. Was this a stupid mistake or an overly enthusiastic volunteer? Were any national organization bylaws violated? What to do next?

    Rules, procedures and protocol exist for a reason. When someone stands up at a party meeting to ask for a quorum call before voting on a resolution the chair is trying to push through, is that person a subversive? Or is that person someone who thinks rules should be followed? That's the basic premise here.

    It is a fact that the local chapter of PDA was created on a certain day. It is a fact that there is a national organization. Either it is in their national bylaws that they have a 30 day notice of meetings, or it isn't.

    One of the reasons I got burned out on politics was the folks who would shrug at facts like the ones in the previous paragraph--they are right, so who needs rules?

    Long before computers existed and well before any campaign had an online director, there were some eternal verities about campaigns. The good candidates established a standard of behavior for supporters and staff.

    This is a test of leadership for Steve. He needs to get the straight story from Liz K. and then decide what to do next. I've known too many campaigns which succeeded or failed because of actions by individuals in the campaign to think this is just about Liz or Steve or 2008.

    This is one reason I have remained neutral. Neither US Senate campaign so far has measured up to some of the classic statewide campaigns of the past.

  • Peter Bray (unverified)
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    And, Kari, you should certainly make it FAR more clear what YOUR involvement is with these campaigns! I assume you built the Novick web site? That's what I conclude from the following:

    I don't usually write about my client work, but I'm so disappointed in my friends at the Novick campaign that I'm going to share it with you.

    If that isn't the case, you need to step up your full disclosure big time.

  • Peter Bray (unverified)
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    Is Kari Chisholm really taking the bold action of criticizing his own client as he suggests?

    I didn't see a Mandate Media link on the Novick web site... hmmm, must have forgotten that.

    Oh, but, weird, I do see one on Merkley's web site...

    So he built both sites? What's going on here? If he built Novick's, then bravo for criticizing. If he built both sites, then a 1/2 bravo for criticizing. If he only built the Merkley web site (from his comments, this doesn't seem to be the case), then he should not comment on this... to do so calls into question his objectivity.

    Well, wait... I guess he isn't objective... but then that should be clearly and abundantly noted on Blue Oregon.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Wait, who is Carl and what did he say? Maybe I just need some sleep. Anyway, we can't delete our comments.

    Also, I may be naive, but I don't think the commenters here are orchestrating anything.

  • Katie (unverified)
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    I'm having a little trouble following how there can be a "fake" endorsement when there hasn't been an endorsement at all. But never mind that - what ARE the rules?

    Is it unfair to try to secure an endorsement without giving your opponent a full open opportunity to make his/her case to the endorsing organization? Or is that just part of the politics?

    Just wondering.

  • (Show?)

    I apologize for the lack of follow-up this evening. I've been in Cannon Beach with family, and they had a fire last night at a fiber optics switching station. Both Qwest and Verizon have been down for nearly 24 hours - rendering Cannon Beach a telecom-free town all day today. (I had to drive out of town to post this at 5 p.m.)

    Anyway...

    At 5:32, Harry asks if I called Novick for comment. I did not. On another story a few weeks ago, which I did not publish, I was told that the Novick campaign wouldn't provide comment to me when I write for BlueOregon - because of my role as a consultant to the Merkley campaign. That's fair and quite understandable. Of course, the beauty of a blog is that Steve Novick himself is able to respond here instantly.

    At 5:37, Pat Malach says that I am not a "fountain of objectivity." That's right. I'm not pretending to be a journalist. As I thought I made clear in the post, I'm quite clearly an active participant in this situation.

    At 5:55, Jake Weigler responds. I'll leave his hyperbole alone, and simply respond to the facts. The meeting was moved to next month after Tim Carpenter, the PDA's executive director, was alerted - and he told me that the PDA requires a 30-day notice to all of its members. A 30-day notice that Liz Kimmerly didn't provide originally. The endorsement vote was moved purely and simply because the original vote as scheduled by Liz Kimmerly violated the PDA's rules.

    At 5:57, Jake whines about me not calling for comment. Jake, don't you remember when you told me that the Novick campaign would not comment to me about stuff I write on BlueOregon? It was only, what, three weeks ago?

    At 6:11, Chris Lowe asks about volunteers versus state coordinators. Chris, I think it's legit that their coordinators ARE volunteers. Tim definitely knew who she was - but didn't know that she had organized an endorsement meeting in a US Senate just 48 hours after forming the local chapter.

    And yes, Chris (and TJ, above) it would certainly be bogus if I were put in charge of the PDA Portland chapter. That's not what I offered. (I'm too busy for that.) I simply told them that I'd be available, if they wanted my help, in publicizing the effort, etc. I don't want to be in charge. I've got a brand new baby, remember?

    At 6:30, Pat Malach once again confuses my role with that of a journalist. I'm a participant here, not an objective observer. I'm posting over my own name, and you can judge what I write on its face. As for whether someone should be fired, that's up to Steve Novick. I do know this: This is the dirtiest thing I've ever seen from a Democratic campaign in Oregon. The Novick people and the Oregonian went nuts when the Merkley campaign did a few still-legal robocalls. This is 1000 times worse. Someone needs to be held accountable.

    At 8:08, Katie B provides unintentional comedy and hilarity. Let me understand, Katie. It's not unethical because when I blew the whistle on it, the national folks yanked the chain on their local volunteer and made sure she wasn't doing any unethical. Can we call it an "attempted dirty trick"? I can live with that. (And stop calling me "Carl", please.)

    At 9:23, Stephanie V implies that I've got some similar conflict of interest as Liz Kimmerly. Here's the difference: #1, BlueOregon isn't part of any national organization. #2, BlueOregon predates this campaign by years. #3, my conflicts are clearly stated. #4, BlueOregon is owned by Mandate Media, my company. #5, BlueOregon is just a blog.

    At 11:37, Peter Bray is confused. I did not build the Novick campaign website. I do have friends at the Novick campaign. I continue to consider Steve and Jake good friends. Jake and I talk regularly (though not as often as before). I don't know how they feel about me today.

  • (Show?)

    My take:

    Bad: Liz Kimmerly trying to pull this fast one. Inexcusable. Period.

    Worse: Jake Weigler chiming in here before all the facts are known and a communications strategy is in place to handle this.

    Worser: The attempt by Jake and other pro-Novick partisans to shift blame by attacking Kari. Do they seriously think people are that stupid? That that would work?

    Worst: The inescapable conclusion that Steve has simply not put together a remotely credible campaign organization. Massive tin ear, bunker mentality, shaky ethics, maladroit media management - this is the crew that's going to take on Gordo and the Republican attack machine?

    If they are, say hello to six more years of Senator Smith.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Steve Maurer | Jan 19, 2008 12:32:51 AM

    Steve, get outta my head.

  • Katie B. (unverified)
    (Show?)

    Karl, Sorry for getting your name wrong. Stand by my other comments. Whole thing is nonsense. Turn the smoke generator up to full blast and hope other people will start yelling, "fire!" No better sign than that that it's the only card left in your hand.

  • Jack Murray (unverified)
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    Posted by: Katie B. | Jan 19, 2008 12:51:08 AM

    Katie, the facts have been pretty clear here. If there's smoke blowing around and obfuscating the points for you, please indicate exactly how you're befuddled.

    It's clear that: a) Liz Kimmerly is the Novick campaign online director b) Liz Kimmerly set up the PDA-Oregon chapter and c) Proceeded to move the endorsement process within 48 hours of forming the group for this Saturday (giving the campaigns involved only 4 days' notice) and d) Failed to contact or notify many of the 2300 members of the national PDA here in Oregon, which e) Violated the rules of the national PDA endorsement process with require 30 days' notice and a written questionnaire. What's more, f) Kimmerly should have known about these processes due to her 'long involvement' with the PDA, and would have followed them if her intentions were purely fair, but g) Since she didn't, this is clearly an attempt to game the endorsement process of a large national organization for the perceived benefit of her employer, Steve Novick.

    Is that lucid enough for you?

    Two implications arise:

    1. Steve Novick said early on that he intends to run an inspired primary campaign on the issues. Will he hold Kimmerly accountable for her attempted sabotage of the kind of race he wants to run?

    2. Gordon Smith would make quick work out of the kind of campaign that acts in this manner. If Steve Novick doesn't hold Kimmerly accountable, how can we trust him to effectively challenge a two-term incumbent senator with a huge warchest and decades of successful campaigning?

    Katie, let me know if that's not perfectly clear. I've got all night.

  • JHL (unverified)
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    I guess the Novick campaign should have gotten their endorsement "Kate Brown Style" by calling the PDA first and not allowing any other candidates to be interviewed.

    That way, the "newsworthy" event would have made it to Blue Oregon with a positive headline explaining how he "wins" a "big national endorsement."

    Because, apparently, the correct way to land an endorsement is to contact an organization and have them endorse you without even contacting your opponents.

  • Jack Murray (unverified)
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    Posted by: JHL | Jan 19, 2008 1:56:58 AM

    For starters, no one on Kate Brown's two (maybe three?) person campaign staff is a member of the 21st Century Democrats, much less the organizer of the local chapter of that group. The opposite is true for the Steve Novick campaign vis-a-vis online director Liz Kimmerly.

    Furthermore, there's no wrongdoing on the part of the Kate Brown campaign in the instance you mention. They applied for endorsement, and the 21st Century Democrats were willing to make that endorsement based on their existing policies and protocol concerning primary endorsements.

    The PDA has very explicit policies regarding endorsements that set it apart from the 21st C. Dems. For one, they require 30 days notice to all members of the chapter, who all get to vote. Secondly, there has to be a written questionnaire sent out to the candidates in the field. Both of those items are the responsibility of the local chapter--and Oregon's local coordinator, Liz Kimmerly (Novick's online director), followed neither item of process/protocol.

    The fact that she's a paid staffer for Novick only exacerbates the fact that she held little regard for the endorsement process--especially in the embryonic stages of an Oregon chapter of PDA.

  • Erik Sorensen (unverified)
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    Sad. That is all I can say. On second thought, I will say a little more. Hearing this will definately make me look a little more suspicious on anything further coming from Novick's campaign.

    Along the lines of what Jack Murray mentioned, any word if Kimmerly is going to continue with Novick? I suspect if he knew nothing of it that it would be good to cut her loose to save a little ounce of credibility, and maybe dignity at that.

    Funny Lars Larson didn't mention anything of this when Steve was on his show yesterday. I think Lars is starting to slip more and more on these things. Whiskey and cigars will do it everytime.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Peter, Merkley is Kari's client, that's pretty well-known, and Kari was shorthanding the reference. Also, Carla hasn't been an LO editor for a long time. And Katie, check out Kari's name one more time.

    And, jeez, since when can an insider not blog about stuff? Kari had information, he shared it. He tells us all the time who his clients are, so we can make our own decisions about whether to believe him. But to insist he withhold information when it could harm any of his many clients' opponents would make this one sucky source for Oregon political info.

  • (Show?)

    Oh Boy! In't it great bein a Democrat!

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    What a sad situation. Leave it to a woman to use a sports metaphor, so here goes. A team is only as good as it's coach. In this situation I expect a team meeting held by Coach Novick and Coach Merkley in seperate locker rooms reviewing campaign ethics yet again, (good sportsmanship) before they hit the field to play. As coaches they are the stewards of fair play.

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    I think suredly there was no doubt in Carla's mind that she'd separate, not least the conflict with the blog's endorsement--but primarily on the basis that you just can't run a private blog and be a candidate's online messenger.

    Indeed. You can't. Nor should a paid staff of a campaign be shoving through a shotgun endorsement as the volunteer state coordinator for an organization. If it's an unethical conflict to run a private blog, then surely it's a more unethical conflict to do what Liz Kimmerly has done.

    I feel comfortable saying that had I been caught setting up the state chapter of an organization and gone around the organizations rules to set up an endorsment process that my boss is participating in--my ass would be on the curb.

    In other words, I'd be fired and the the local press would pillory me. And they'd be right to do it. Not to mention the fact that I'd probably be nuclear in Oregon politics afterward.

    The campaigns shut you up. Carla had a looser leash for a couple of weeks it seemed, but that stopped pretty quickly. I know for a fact that Novick's requirement was almost total online silence that isn't on message. It's understood.

    Actually, most of the shutting up has been my doing, not the campaign's. I felt it was inappropriate for me to comment most of the time because of my paid position.

    I'm also reasonably intelligent--and I have an obligation to Jeff Merkley to represent him and the campaign appropriately. That's why I would be fired if I'd done something like what has been described here.

    Neither of us really needed to bring it up, it was understood. But I certainly would have asked and then demanded, were it someone less gracious and forthright than Carla.

    Exactly. You would have demanded that I act appropriately and ethically. And you'd have been right to do it.

    I look forward to seeing you carry that standard in this case as well.

    Carla--Netroots Outreach, Jeff Merkley for Oregon

  • Pat Malach (unverified)
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    "I'm not pretending to be a journalist. As I thought I made clear in the post, I'm quite clearly an active participant in this situation."

    Don't flatter yourself Kari, I NEVER would confuse you with journalist.

    I'm just saying it looks pretty smelly when BlueOregon's publisher, the only person in this primary to earn a Rogue of the Week for his attacks in this primary and whose company makes money from Jeff Merkley's campaign, is the only person covering this for BlueOregon.

    So much for that credibility thing.

    Seems Moses Ross, democratic consultant who DOESN'T WORK FOR ANY CAMPAIGN, didn't think there were any dirty tricks here. Did you Call anyone for the other side for the story?

    No, because you wanted a scandal, not the truth.

    In fact, the entire, "Wow I hate to do this" intro was some great acting. You deserve an academy award. 'Cause there sure ain't gonna be any awards for fairness coming your way.

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    Pat Malach

    Please stay on point. The Eugene Register Guard and the Oregonian published the story yesterday. My concern is the shame brought to our political party.

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    Liz Kimmerly -- (I'm sure you're reading this), one of the best lessons from the Clinton (Bill) machine is that they responded immediately when put on the defensive.

    I heart, heart, heart Steve Novick, would hope that someone that smart could be my senator someday. Would you do some very loyal Novick supporters (aka, me) a favor and let us know your side of the story? Please?

  • typical (unverified)
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    Typical of the Novick supporters. Merkley's involvement in this is what? Novick's folks commit an error that you are more likley to see a 20 something first time campaign manager for a state House race commit. Then, rather than his backers (who have done nothing but question--tacitly and implicitly--the progressive credibilities of Merkley, saying oops, we messed up, they instead act like a four year old who blames a sibling. And there seems to be many a commenter here who have taken pots shots at the Speaker who are saying this is a "sad situation" and implying that this somehow reflects poorly on the Merkley campaign as much as it does the Novick campaign. See Phil's comment about it being great to be a Democrat. It is great to be a Democrat! We have a wonderful pair of candidates. One messed up, and he and his campaign need to address their credibility. Then he can get on to focusing on those progressive ideals that make this a great race. Merkley? Keep up the hard work. Keep raising money. Keep staying above the fray. Keep wracking up the legit endorsements...AFL, AFT, AFSCME.

  • bill w (unverified)
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    Cirle the wagons and shoot....out not in!

  • Pat Malach (unverified)
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    Paulie,

    Please pay attention

    From Steves' report:

    Democratic consultant Moses Ross, who was asked to take that duty over, said he’d been concerned that Kimmerly was trying to rush the endorsement process. But he added that he didn’t think the Novick staffer was trying to rig the process to benefit her boss—even though that could have been the effect. “I don’t sense there were any dirty tricks involved - just enthusiastic activists,” said Ross, who is not involved with the campaigns of any of the Democrats running for the Senate seat held by Republican Gordon Smith.

    Just one of the things kari would have learned had he actually investigated this incident with the intent of discovering the truth rather than flaming a scandal.

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    Posted by: Peter Bray | Jan 18, 2008 11:43:35 PM If he only built the Merkley web site (from his comments, this doesn't seem to be the case), then he should not comment on this... to do so calls into question his objectivity.

    That would be analogous to, if Novick drove a Ford Taurus, Bill Ford (executive chairman of Ford Motor Company) not being able to comment on anything Novick does because his company built the vehicle. Let's be blunt here, that's what a web site is - a vehicle. Nothing more and nothing less. The website builder isn't responsible for content any more than Bill Ford is responsible for what drivers of his cars say.

  • Bernard (unverified)
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    Posted by: Katie | Jan 19, 2008 12:12:09 AM I'm having a little trouble following how there can be a "fake" endorsement when there hasn't been an endorsement at all.

    It's like, if you aim a gun at someone and pull the trigger and you miss, that's not murder. But it sure as hell might be attempted murder. Still a crime.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Pat, I may not be getting it, are you saying that Kari should include opinions of third parties in his blog posts?

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Ooh, ooh! Analogies! But where are the Star Wars ones?

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    At 9:22 this morning, Pat Malach complains that I'm "the only person covering this for BlueOregon." First, I'm not the only, I'm the first. And second, as I think I've said over and over now, I'm not "covering" it. I'm describing MY ROLE in what happened. I am an active participant here. I called the PDA. I told them what Kimmerly was up to. I blew the whistle. Me. Active participant. Not disinterested observer. Not journalist. Not "covering" it. Participating. Telling you what I'm up to. Got it? (And as always, feel free to evaluate what I have to say. I don't have some monopoly on the omniscient truth. Just what I saw and heard and know.)

    At 9:58, Pat hangs his hat on a throwaway quote from Moses Ross. Look, Moses is entitled to his opinion. That's fine. He's trying to make peace, and he's trying to salvage the reputation of the local PDA chapter. Personally, I think the smart move for the PDA is to make clear that Liz Kimmerly wasn't acting on their behalf - and to jettison her immediately. But that's up to them. As for the "facts"... The basics aren't disputed here. Moses has an opinion about Kimmerly's intent. I disagree. But he doesn't dispute what happened.

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    Pat Malach, Moses Ross was brought in after the impropriety of what Liz was doing was brought to light. So your strange assertions that Kari is being remiss to "investigate" the situation is absurd and changes nothing about the facts of what Liz did, and what Kari is reporting here.

    Kari is not however the issue or the story here, as much as you would like to make it. Aside from the (at best and most charitable interpretation) dumb and improper thing Liz did, the larger issue this incident exposes which I and others have touched on up-thread, is the questions it raises about Novick's skill-set at building a team, know how to lead it, his skill at spotting the red flags as they pop-up, and how to work within a team (while being responsible for it and leading it) to be effective not just as a candidate, but where he to hold office, being responsible and effective as an elected official, particularly at this level (United States Senate). While the candidate/elected official are the leader and are ultimately responsible, they are actually just the most visible and central member of a team if they want to be effective at all. No matter how smart or intelligent they are, at this level it is impossible to be effective and responsible as a one-man team.

  • Harry Wilson (unverified)
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    Unrelated clarification: The Harry posting earlier on this thread is not Harry Wilson. Harry Wilson is me, the guy that works for Kroger, enjoys midnight touch football, has a passion for Fresca and cupcakes, and who cannot do a handstand. I, Harry Wilson, plan to stay out of posting on debates about candidates in the Democratic primaries, but if I do post, I will always identify myself by including my last name.

  • Katie (unverified)
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    Bernard - Thanks for replying. What about the second part of my question?

    Is it OK for campaigns to try to gain a procedural advantage when seeking organizational endorsements, or are they ethically obliged to make sure the other guy gets an equal opportunity at it?

  • Admiral Naismith (unverified)
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    All I have to say is, someone's going to be nominated to run against Gordon Smith, and then we all have to be ready to shake hands and go to the mat for that one.

    It might help if we didn't slice up the candidates and each other like Thanksgiving turkeys ahead of that moment.

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    Kari, you are correct. The facts are what they are. I do not dispute what happened. However, I don't know what her full intentions were. It was not completely shared with me. One can make their own assumptions based on her actions.

    I do know that I was approched by her to facilitate the endorsement process section of the meeting. I was not involved in the actual chapter organization details.

    I warned Liz of legitimacy problems due to the shortened time periods but was assured that she was in contact with national PDA folks and that they knew of the situation. I never spoke personally to anyone at PDA national.

    All I do know is this. If I am involved in this local chapter being organized and in this local chapter's endorsement process, I will make it as fair and transparent of a process as possible, in regulation with the national PDA charter, to assure legitimacy.

    Lets keep in mind that the Progressive Democrats of America is an excellent national organization, with some high caliber progressives in their leadership. They do great work in supporting the grassroots via education and activism. So starting the state chapter is a good thing. However, for this to work, given what has happened, we need to make sure that the organizational process and the endorsment process is legitimate and not tainted due to some over-enthusiatic campaign activists.

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    Admiral Naismith makes a good observation. But the ethics of this are such that given how much weeping and gnashing of teeth the Left has vented at the shenanigans of the Right, we can hardly keep quiet about shenanigans by the Left and be surprised when Centrists and Righties call us hypocrites.

    That said... does anyone honestly believe that if nobody had said anything and Liz had gone ahead with the sham endorsement... that the Smith campaign a) wouldn't have figured it out and/or b) wouldn't have used that silence to bludgeon the Democratic candidate (even if it's Merkley) in the general election as being ethically challenged, if for no other reason than for his silence? If you do then I'm here to suggest that you pull your head out of your posterior and begin dealing with the real world.

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    Thank you, Moses, for playing a responsible role here.

    Katie asked, Is it OK for campaigns to try to gain a procedural advantage when seeking organizational endorsements, or are they ethically obliged to make sure the other guy gets an equal opportunity at it?

    Working hard and fighting hard for an endorsement is to be expected. For example, it's reasonable for both campaigns to campaign hard for the support of local OEA members in the OEA endorsement process that's underway right now.

    What's not OK is breaking the rules. Liz Kimmerly broke the explicit endorsement rules of the Progressive Democrats of America. That's not at dispute here. Beyond that, there's an ethical question as to whether it's appropriate for a campaign staffer to play any role (even just setting the meeting date) in an endorsement in that campaign.

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    Posted by: Moses Ross | Jan 19, 2008 11:53:13 AM

    Thanks for posting here to give more information on this Moses (Mitch Gore here). Do you know of what steps were taken to actually notify the PDA membership in Oregon about the rushed endorsement meeting beyond Liz posting it on the Novick campaign site?

    When were you asked by Liz to facilitate the endorsement process section of the meeting?

    When were you made aware of the problems of timing and when did you express your concerns to her about it?

    When/where were you aware that she is a high-level paid staffer in the campaign for Novick?

    I realize you are now in a situation filled with a few land-mines because of what Liz has done here, but I hope you can fill in the answers to some of these questions.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Moses Ross | Jan 19, 2008 11:53:13 AM
    I warned Liz of legitimacy problems due to the shortened time periods but was assured that she was in contact with national PDA folks and that they knew of the situation. I never spoke personally to anyone at PDA national.

    Moses, you don't consider someone lying to you about getting the national organization to sign off in order to pacify your fears of bias in the endorsement process proof of unethical intent?

  • (Show?)

    What a mess... I hope all outstanding questions get answered, as this is just strange and mystifying.

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    Phil Philiben, best comment on the thread.

    Kari, Peter B's confusion results from a very confusing disclosure. You are normally very good with those, but this one was very bad. Read it again.

    None of this, on any side, is "Rovian." Rove put a former governor in federal prison. Rove reshaped the Justice Department to serve his politics. Some perspective here, please.

    Isn't it a campaign's job to assess the value of an endorsement before pursuing it? I'll admit this smells fishy, but anything beyond that is hyperbole -- and very damaging hyperbole, at that. All this head on a stick stuff. Geez.

  • Miles (unverified)
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    I do know this: This is the dirtiest thing I've ever seen from a Democratic campaign in Oregon.

    If hyperbole were a measure 11 crime, Kari, you'd be going away for at least 5 years.

    the larger issue this incident exposes which I and others have touched on up-thread, is the questions it raises about Novick's . . . [ability to be] responsible and effective as an elected official, particularly at this level (United States Senate).

    Wow, Lestat. I'm not sure you went far enough. I think this particular incident -- an overzealous campaign staffer engaging in pedestrian antics -- actually demonstrates Novick's dismal existence as a human being and his possible role as the antichrist in the coming apocalypse.

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    Hyperbole? Really? I think the story speaks plainly enough for itself for hyperbole to be mostly off the table...

  • Katie (unverified)
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    Thanks for replying, Kari. Actually, as I understand it, Liz Kimmerly almost broke the PDA endorsement rules, but Moses Ross is going to be sure they are followed to the letter. Any chance it was an honest mistake? Liz wouldn't be the only person who ever failed to "read the directions on the package" first.

    But I guess your main point is that it is unethical for a campaign staffer to have any role in an endorsing organization? I'm trying to understand the rules here.

  • LT (unverified)
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    Excuse me, but this is not "slicing up candidates". This is the sort of accountability that I think Speaker Hastert wished the House GOP had done when the election results came in on that Nov. night in 2006 and he realized that in 2007 he would no longer be known as Speaker Hastert, just a member of the minority.

    I liked this:

    the ethics of this are such that given how much weeping and gnashing of teeth the Left has vented at the shenanigans of the Right, we can hardly keep quiet about shenanigans by the Left and be surprised when Centrists and Righties call us hypocrites

    I have just written to a political friend that we have primaries partly to see how candidates deal with challenges.

    To take this back to a wider level, this is a great time to think about campaign philosophy in general. A party with the attitude "our guy is best, and thus allowed to do anything to win" should be considered a to have a "Rovian" attitude, as many people here don't remember Oregon's version of Rove--a Democrat named Dave Dix prior to his great loss in 1990.

    The Republican party is coming apart right now into factions, with old timers saying they don't recognize the party any more. There is evidence of that in a wonderful book I just checked out from the New Books shelf at our public library:

    Victor Gold, "Invasion of the Party Snatchers".

    Gold speaks of his glee on election night 1994 when the Democrats lost their congressional majority, and equal glee when the Republicans (who had turned into every bad adjective he'd used for Democrats) lost in 2006. He'd been a Republican activist since his days working for Barry Goldwater, but despaired the 21st century GOP had lost the moral core they had with Goldwater.

    In the book, Barry Goldwater has campaign advice that all the 2008 candidates would do well to heed:

    "Politics is like bullfighting. Getting gored is a risk you take".

    I agree with Steve Mauer and Jack Murray. Does that mean I have a Merkley bumper sticker on my car or have otherwise declared myself? I am a declared undecided voter and may well decide on other primaries before I decide on this one.

    Those of you who don't think Kari's chronlogy is fact owe it to us to explain where he is wrong. Lord knows the number of times I have hotly disagreed with Kary, but I especially appreciated this:

    At 9:23, Stephanie V implies that I've got some similar conflict of interest as Liz Kimmerly. Here's the difference: #1, BlueOregon isn't part of any national organization. #2, BlueOregon predates this campaign by years. #3, my conflicts are clearly stated. #4, BlueOregon is owned by Mandate Media, my company. #5, BlueOregon is just a blog.

    Listen folks, I have lived through nasty campaigns where my candidate who was also my friend before and after the campaign was subject to world class attacks. If those were of the "swift boat" variety, what has gone on here is barely a raft or a canoe.

    I see at the top of the Novick website that there is a debate scheduled Jan. 22--E. Oregonian.

    Are there more than a handful of comments on this blog from people who don't live in the Portland metropolitan area? Paulie lives in Jackson county, I live in Marion county, who else is there? For those of you who are partisans for a candidate, I would suggest you work with your campaign and with folks outside the Portland area to come up with a straight answer if someone asks about the campaign's role in this episode.

    But if the goal is to win votes and thus win the primary, the odds are that out in E. Oregon, the PDA is not a major factor in local politics the way it might be in Portland. The issue of how this episode was handled might be a topic of discussion, but the economy, health care, Iraq, and many other issues may be more important there.

    One reason Gordon Smith won in 1996 is that he was "faster on his feet" (more able to deal with opportunity and the unexpected) than Bruggere, and his manner won over ordinary folks.

    There are undecided voters who use episodes like this to decide on the basis of which candidate they think has the strongest moral backbone.

    All you Novick folks, you may think Steve Novick is the best US Senate candidate of the last several decades. But if an undecided voter reads about this and says to a friend "If Novick doesn't fire that woman, he has all the moral backbone of a wet noodle", there is nothing you will be able to do about that--and like other private conversations, you will have no idea if/how often something like that happens. So don't take the risk of blog comments which might strike some people as whining. Have heart to heart talks with Steve on what you personally believe he should do about this situation--that would be more useful.

  • Pat Malach (unverified)
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    As Jake pointed out earlier, Kari, who claimed in another thread that his role in this incident was to "investigate," failed to contact one of the involved campaign's to give them a chance to tell their side of the story -- as common courtesy (not to mention an actual quest for the truth) would dictate.

    Kari's "investigation" amounted to presenting his client's version of events to the DPA and then recording the response here at BlueOregon.

    So call me a cynic if his crocodile tears about being disappointed in his friends at the Novick campaign rings a little hollow. If he really felt that way, a phone call was in order to ask for their side of what was going on?

    Actions speak louder than words. His failure to extend the common courtesy for the Novick campaign to have a chance to defend themselves reveals Kari's motives in this "investigation" on behalf of his client. because it's an "investigation" that would make Alberto Gonzales blush.

  • Navel Gazers, Unite! (unverified)
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    I think there's still a little bit more lint buried in this belly button. Keep digging, Progs.

    I'm sure this is one of those issues that primary voters really care about. Really. A lot.

  • Katie (unverified)
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    I have been trying to figure out what all the commotion is about here. Apparently Liz Kimmerly should have read the PDA endorsement rules before scheduling a meeting. She didn't, so now someone else (who has read the rules) is going to schedule and run the meetings. Did I miss something?

    There's been no "fake" endorsement and no one can point me to any clear ethical rules about participating in multiple organizations.

    If you all think this dialogue is advancing the cause of good government and the Democratic Party, please continue on. I'm going to call it a "Tempest in a Teapot," put the lid on it, and go to the movies.

    Good afternoon, everybody.

  • Nitin Rai (unverified)
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    I am a late comer to this news..wow! If I were Steve Novick I would be cleaning house. This is not a good sign and validates my comments on another thread about Steve Novick's first ad was "slick" and I still wonder "where's the beef?".

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    Let's imagine that a paid campaign staff member of a campaign inserted themselves as the chair of Washington County Democratic Party without disclosing that they were a campaign partisan. Gained access to the statewide party membership list, had sole control over that list, then "announces" an organizational meeting (the first) of the country party which nobody has yet to have actually seen, brings in another Democratic volunteer and tells them that the DNC is all onboard with having an endorsement meeting even though the process and timing of the meeting violates the DNC rules and guidelines, even though we have from the DNC that no such approval to break the rules occurs, is questioned about the timing by the volunteer she brought if she has made sure that the process and timing are legit and reminds them that they need to make sure each and every candidate is properly invited, then this person invites their main rivals campaign, to this endorsement meeting that who knows who has actually been invited to, and at this meeting they are to decide who the DPO (which has yet to even been formed) is going to give its endorsement for the U.S. Senate race.

    How would Multnomah County Democrats feel about that? How would Marion County Democrats feel about it? How would any Democrat who was not privy to/ad or was not able this sudden organizing/endorsement meeting feel about the legitimacy of the endorsement or the process?

    And that analogy is with using parties who have verifiable membership and established by-laws, etc. which the organization in their case (PDA) has had no formal establishment at all in the state of Oregon until Liz began this by trying to arrange this endorsement meeting.

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    Hey, remember when someone spoke directly with Jeff Merkley at a cocktail party and reported back what they heard from the conversation? If you like, I can go back and reprint the litany of "well, just because you say so doesn't mean that those things were said, or even that the meeting actually happened," from several folks, including Kari specifically.

    So here we have Kari--openly admitting his bias on the matter--reporting back to us what he got from the PDA national. And the conclusion from the peanut gallery (at least many of the Merkley peanuts) is to start looking for rope.

    It's a long weekend. Perhaps we should wait until we hear DIRECTLY from the national. I'm sure at some point they'll speak officially, right? Either to sanction or back up Kimmerly? I think what their position is will say a lot about how seriously to take any of this. And forgive me if I don't prima facie accept Kari's version of things.

    I'm still confused about how you get a fake endorsement by inviting the opposing candidate to participate. Did Merkley's phone banks go out this week, preventing them from rallying supporters in the PDA to the endorsement meeting? (I warned them about that burn rate!) I'm also confused about a 'sham organization' apparently being duly and properly constituted. Or a rigged process, when Moses Ross is standing there waving his hand saying, "I was going to run the vote, people." (And contrary to lestat, I think he was involved in that capacity with the prior knowledge of PDA when they were contacted by Merkley's campaign). So let's stand by a bit here until we get a proper explanation.

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    At 12:51, Pete Forsyth: Kari, Peter B's confusion results from a very confusing disclosure. You are normally very good with those, but this one was very bad. Read it again.

    Aha. I finally see how my statement in the post could be read to suggest that I work for Novick. Of course, I've written several hundred times that I built Merkley's website. And Jenni Simonis has written several dozen times at least that she built Novick's website. I'm not sure any of our regular readers would misunderstand this. But for the record: I built Jeff Merkley's website. I did not build Steve Novick's website. As always, I speak only for myself.

    At 1:08, Miles takes issue with my description of this as "the dirtiest thing I've seen in a Democratic campaign in Oregon." OK, Miles, I'll bite: What Democraic campaign has committed a dirtier trick in Oregon politics? (I'm sure there is one, sometime, but not one that I can remember.)

    As for hyperbole, I'm with Ben Dupree at 1:11. This incident doesn't need any hyperbole to get off the ground. It's outrageous on its face.

    At 1:13, Katie: That's right, Katie. We can call it an "attempted dirty trick" that was averted when I called the executive director of the PDA. I'm thankful that Moses Ross is going to do this right. And yes, I don't think people who are on campaign staff with a candidate should play a leadership or coordinating role in the endorsement of candidates in that race.

    At 1:26, LT wonders aloud "Are there more than a handful of comments on this blog from people who don't live in the Portland metropolitan area?". Actually, LT, you'd be surprised about how outside-Portland BlueOregon's commenters are. On this thread alone... Bradley Dunn is in Salem, John-Mark Gilhousen is in The Dalles, Pat Ryan is somewhere up on Mt. Hood, Phil Philiben is in Deschutes County. I don't know where a lot of our commenters live, but of those I am aware of - roughly 50% are outside Portland. In any case, thanks for your thoughtful comments here.

    At 1:27, Pat Malach again complains that I didn't contact Novick for comment. Once again, Pat, the Novick campaign has made it clear to me that they won't comment to me. Which is their right. I didn't tell the PDA my version of the facts. I asked them what they knew. Tim Carpenter is the one who told me that the Portland chapter was created 48 hours before the endorsement meeting was called - and Tim Carpenter is the one that told me the endorsement rules had been violated. "That's not how we do things", he said.

    1:56, Katie (whoever you are) keeps spinning this as not-a-big-deal: Listen, Kimmerly may not have been successful in getting a shotgun endorsement from a local organization that she set up 48 hours prior to announcing an endorsement meeting. But that doesn't mean she didn't try.

  • (Show?)

    Beaming in from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, where I finally managed to get an internet signal. Interesting thread. After all the chaos dies down, here's what I'd like to know: has/will the Novick folk clarify their role in this? Kari cites facts above that no one has disputed and a lot of people, including Kari, make the assumption that Steve Novick wasn't trying to pull a fast one. The only defense anyone has yet offered is the yawn-proking, "but Kari's a rat bastard and Merkley's a stooge for the DSCC!" maneuver. So as I read this with the distance of time and space, I'm left wondering--has Steve issued a statement washing his hands of this? That's all it would take since that appears to be all anyone thinks has happened--an overactive staffer has made a misstep and the campaign just needs to step back from it.

    Yeah yeah, we know certain commenters think Merkley's a stooge and Kari's Darth Vader--still, what about the facts presented in this post?

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Pat Malach | Jan 19, 2008 1:27:24 PM As Jake pointed out earlier, Kari, who claimed in another thread that his role in this incident was to "investigate," failed to contact one of the involved campaign's to give them a chance to tell their side of the story -- as common courtesy (not to mention an actual quest for the truth) would dictate.

    Pat's selective recitation of comments here demonstrates why his credibility is nonexistant.

    He has already commented directly (here) on Kari's comment (a href="http://www.blueoregon.com/2008/01/fake-endorsemen.html#c97739468">here) where Kari explicitly pointed out that Jake has already established a policy on behalf of the Novick campaign of not offering Kari any comments on behalf of anything he writes here at Blue Oregon. Thus there would have been no point in Kari asking Jake for a comment. Duh!

    Is there any doubt that Pat Malach is practicing rank demagoguery here?

    This is precisely the kind of dishonesty that drove me from the GOP many years ago. I'll be damned if I'll tolerate it from Democrats now or ever!

  • Jack Murray (unverified)
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    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 19, 2008 2:14:41 PM

    TJ, the very clear difference here is that the story began with David Steves, a journalist who works for a newspaper. Furthermore, there are primary documents that back up what Kari reports the the National Director of PDA to have said.

    Here's a link [warning: PDF] to national PDA's requirements for endorsing a Congressional candidate (I assume that the guidelines for endorsing a Senate candidate are very similar, if not stricter).

    It's very clear that to endorse, the group must be at least 30 days old. What's more, each of the candidates must be a member of PDA for at least 5 days before they can be considered for that endorsement. I don't see how that was possible given that Kimmerly, the state coordinator of the then 2-day old group, only gave four days' notice that there would be an organizational meeting with endorsements.

    Your argument that this is similar to a sort of 'hearsay' reporting is also undermined by the fact that there are emails here, as well as the PDA-Oregon website, which still says nothing at all about today's meeting or the meeting from a month from now.

    That all corroborates Carpenter's statement that 'that's not how we do things around here'.

    The facts are here. What's not here is a proactive response from the Novick campaign addressing these facts and putting forward an action plan to solve this problem.

  • (Show?)

    "TJ, the very clear difference here is that the story began with David Steves, a journalist who works for a newspaper."

    Perhaps so. Already, however, we see that Kari is contradicting Steves' account. To wit:

    " Kimmerly may not have been successful in getting a shotgun endorsement from a local organization that she set up 48 hours prior to announcing an endorsement meeting."

    Now Steves:

    Liz Kimmerly isn’t just the PDA state coordinator in Oregon, a position she accepted a little more than a month ago when the chapter formed.

    2 days, a month--hey, details, details!

    Like I said, trusting the Merkley operative to tell the full story about the Novick operative is a risky strategy.

  • (Show?)

    Kari and Mandate Media didn't build Novick's web site, I did. There's a line right towards the bottom of the site that says so.

  • LT (unverified)
    (Show?)

    Thanks, Kari for the info.

    Now about this:

    "At 1:08, Miles takes issue with my description of this as "the dirtiest thing I've seen in a Democratic campaign in Oregon." OK, Miles, I'll bite: What Democraic campaign has committed a dirtier trick in Oregon politics? (I'm sure there is one, sometime, but not one that I can remember.)"

    Kari--I'll take up your challenge.

    2 related things from the same campaign. The one the candidate had to have known about:

    *The "Rajneesh" ads by 1992 Les AuCoin which I am sure many independent observers would rank as "swiftboating"--took a few lines from a letter Lonsdale had once written and in true Rove style an ad agency turned them into an ad with Rajneeshies moving around on the screen. If this ad was so effective, why did the primary end in a recount? Why are there people who never trusted AuCoin after that campaign? Finally, the Oregonian published the text of the letter to let people decide for themselves if it had been taken out of context.

    What may have been an "overenthusiastic volunteer" scenario:

    *On the day Jerry Brown held a rally in downtown Portland right before the 1992 primary, 3 guys came to a Lonsdale rally some blocks away in a public square with the intention of disrupting the rally. Some of the people at the rally were working on their first campaign, but one was a former state central comm. member who recognized one of the men as a union activist who had stood with his union in 1986 when they endorsed Packwood over the Dem. nominee. So, the long time activist told some really angry people at the rally just to walk up to the men and ask who they'd supported for US Senate in 1986, which startled the guys and prevented them from disrupting the rally.

    I think this episode is a test of Steve Novick's leadership style. If his reaction is to get furiously angry at this stunt and, in the words of a commenter above, "If I were Steve Novick I would be cleaning house." that would show Steve has a moral/ethical backbone. If he is silent, that does not look good.

    And in answer to TJ's question, some of us have been sticklers for rules since before we ever heard of Merkley or Novick. That is why bylaws exist. Some groups have endorsement criteria of 2/3--roughly 66% of the vote. In such a case, a candidate who gets 59% of the vote had a majority but did not get the endorsement. In primary / caucus situations, a presidential candidate with 12% or 14% of the vote gets no delegates. This episode is almost like a candidate with 12% of the vote demanding a delegate when that is contrary to the rules.

    If the national bylaws say 30 days notice, then 29 or fewer days notice are in violation of the bylaws. That is a single standard. A double standard would be "OK in this case to have less than 30 days notice because that would be in favor of our guy" when many would guess that if the tables were turned there would be a demand for at least a month's notice.

    I'm a single standard person. If bylaws call for a quorum before a vote then I believe there should be a quorum call, even if my "side" would benefit from not having a quorum call. I know 2 people (one from each party) who seemed on track to win county party office some years ago until a bylaw change JUST BEFORE THE VOTE ON OFFICERS prevented them from a chance to gain that office.

    This is a character issue for me. If to be a Novick supporter is to say the national bylaws didn't matter because it isn't a requirement to actually read bylaws before proceeding, then Novick doesn't want my vote. I've been involved in the process of re-writing delegate selection rules and a friend of mine has been the State Rules Comm. Chair.

    This primary will be over by summer, and Novick folks should ponder whether they want to be known as the people who violate national bylaws of an organization. Do you really think Gordon Smith would pass up the chance to respond to a complaint with "and this from people who don't read bylaws from a group whose endorsement they want"?

  • (Show?)

    "If the national bylaws say 30 days notice, then 29 or fewer days notice are in violation of the bylaws. That is a single standard. A double standard would be "OK in this case to have less than 30 days notice because that would be in favor of our guy" when many would guess that if the tables were turned there would be a demand for at least a month's notice."

    You are making the assumption that the bylaws, if violated (which they actually weren't since no endorsement meeting has taken place), represent an intent to defraud the process rather than a poor reading of the rules.

    As for your 2,000th made-up hypothetical about what the perspectives of others are, please refer to my clear statement above that if the endorsement rules are not being followed, they absolutely need to be. And if they weren't going to be for whatever reason until someone checked them, they should have been. You can ascribe motives to your heart's content, but realize they are not necessarily THE motives.

    If it's PDA's bylaws that have been violated (or intent to violate them is shown) then I assume the organization in charge will decide what to do to maintain its own integrity. That's all I'm suggesting we wait for, some formal reaction from the theoretically aggrieved party.

  • petrichor (unverified)
    (Show?)

    since kimmerly was appointed to pda by the national chapter a month ago--removing the possibility that novick was involved--and was not ever going to facilitate the vote, i see only two possible improprieties here:

    1) that the endorsement vote was rushed and--intentionally or not--that broke the pda rules, and 2) that the natinoal pda appointers may not have been informed by kimmerly that she was involved in the novick campaign.

    that bothers me a bit, but i am not here to judge intentions (road to hell, intentions, paving, and so no). the fact is that the break in procedure was caught, and the campaign association was revealed, and it is now being handled correctly.

    in the meantime this has generated a lot of publicity for PDA, which is a very good organization, and this will probably be cause for a higher turnout at the endorsement meeting next month. i know i am now going to join PDA; prior to this incedent i did not know a local caucus had formed.

    finally, i have not once seen any critique of novick on the issues. all the bitter partisanship against novick has been outrage over fake scandals, and copious amounts of concern trolling. oh yeah, and how his height might cost him the election...

  • (Show?)
    You are making the assumption that the bylaws, if violated (which they actually weren't since no endorsement meeting has taken place), represent an intent to defraud the process rather than a poor reading of the rules.

    You are confused, TJ. The bylaws don't have to actually be broken in order to represent "an intent to defraud." That only requires an attempt to break the rules, which is what we appear to have here. If nobody intervenes and they are actually broken then "intent" has been left in the dust and it's moved into actual fraud.

    As for whether Kimmerly is guilty of "a poor reading of the rules," it's been asserted in her defense that she has a long history with the PDA, which you ought to remember since you and Jake both made that assertion. If that's true then she really has no excuse for not having known the rules long ago.

    What argues most pursuasively against your floated explanation is the fact that she moved to set up this rogue chapter long after having joined the Novick campaign (red flag) and then immediately tried to set up a nomination meeting, ignoring a wide variety of glaringly obvious ethical conflicts of interest in the process (lots of red flags!!).

  • JHL (unverified)
    (Show?)

    Finally... another story above this one!

    Has anyone else noticed that this thread was on top of BlueOregon for a relatively long time?

    But threads that start tipping against certain candidates (like, I dunno... Kate Brown, Greg Macpherson, etc) get scrolled down off of the home page really quickly?

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 19, 2008 3:12:46 PM

    Steves' report seems to indicate that he got his information from the Novick campaign rather than seeking it from the national PDA.

    Also Mosses' comment that Kimmerly lied to him about the involvement of the national chapter to pacify his concerns about the possibility of impropriety. Attempting to deceive others proves malicious intent in my book.

  • (Show?)

    since kimmerly was appointed to pda by the national chapter a month ago

    There is one factual disagreement here that hasn't been resolved.

    David Steves, relying on the Novick campaign, says that the Portland chapter was formed a month ago.

    I quoted Tim Carpenter, the executive director of the Progressive Democrats of America, who says that the Portland chapter was formed "48 hours ago" (speaking to me on Wednesday.) He said that to me, laughing, by way of explaining how there couldn't possibly be an endorsement meeting on Saturday (today.)

    I don't know how to reconcile those two statements. I'm just reporting what Tim Carpenter said to me.

  • James X. (unverified)
    (Show?)

    The lack of posts could also have something to do with it being the weekend (fewer posts), or with Kari having no Internet access in Cannon Beach, or with the fact that this is one of the more significant stories that's been on BlueO in a while, and was generating a lot of discussion.

    Also, is the defense now that Kari stopped the process, so no harm, no foul?

    I do believe it would be helpful if David Steves noted his source on the month-ago fact, as Kari cited the executive director of PDA for the 48-hours figure.

  • Hawthorne (unverified)
    (Show?)

    "one of the more significant stories..."

    Goodness. Thankfully, there is a real blue oregon outside of this one right here on the innertubes. They don't play inside baseball there, and this is hardly a significant story.

    Pardon the interruption. Feel free to go back to the circular firing squad.

    In the meantime some of us are actually waiting for- oh, I don't know, the actual facts?

  • (Show?)

    Some more information about the rather incredulous claims by Jake Weigler which is being pushed here by TJ about there being a local chapter formed a month ago since there is no local chapter until this Saturday meeting. There is no Oregon caucus organization yet. This "endorsement" meeting was the first ever "meeting" for the local chapter. When Liz became the local chapter organizer is not actually confirmed at all, or if she approached the national PDA or vice-versa. Even if she became the local chapter organizer, this endorsement meeting was the first, and so far only thing this local chapter has done.

    I have spoken to someone involved in this directly and as of this afternoon there is no actual local chapter, and that this meeting was intended to be an organizing and endorsement meeting. So until this meeting for organizing the local chapter, there is no local chapter. Only a volunteer to be the coordinator, and a list held by national of people who signed up to join the PDA and became members who happen to reside in Oregon. A list which BTW, is what apparently Liz was given by national for organizing purposes to form the local chapter (i.e. hold this evenings organizing/"endorsement" meeting) from the national list. So as I posted up-thread, she is the sole gatekeeper on this list of people signed up to be PDA members with the national organization online, who have an Oregon address.

    We have so far, zero confirmation by anyone about any notification to Oregon PDA members (who only need sign up via email at the national PDA website to be "members") about any meeting until the one moving back this endorsement to February, which came after this conflict of interest alarms went off and it began to break online.

    Nobody has received this claimed notification email about the Saturday endorsement/organizing meeting on Saturday. Only the one sent to the Merkley campaign on the 14th. If anyone has received this PDA notification email from the PDA please share with us when it was received what it said, etc.

  • James X. (unverified)
    (Show?)

    It's one of the more significant stories, Hawthorne, because it's not something like "SOS candidates disagree" or "AG candidate makes proposal" that any newspaper also could tell you. This is original information BlueOregon has that others don't, on a live breaking story clearly so hot that official representatives of both campaigns and the organization in question personally commented to this very blog post.

  • lin qiao (unverified)
    (Show?)

    Let me make one thing perfectly clear: the nattering nabobs of negativism did not have sex with that woman.

  • (Show?)

    Correction, looking back it was not Jake that asserted that Liz was made organizing coordinator for the PDA here in Oregon, but others in this thread based on the Steves assertion in the original post, the source of that claim which Steves used for that information is unknown.

  • (Show?)

    If Novick becomes the nominee, and Gordon Smith hits the Novick camp, are they going to take this long to respond to serious allegations of wrongdoing?

    Why isn't someone, Novick or someone else from his campaign, clarifying the facts if they are incorrect or making heads roll and cleaning up the matter if the fact are as reported?

    Campaigns, not candidates, win elections and even if this fiasco gets cleaned up, the way it was handled hasn't given me much confidence in Novick's campaign.

  • (Show?)

    I had the PDA e-mail forwarded to me a few times by people who thought I might be interested since they knew I was involved in progressive/dem groups.

    I received the first one on Tuesday (and several more copies on Wednesday and Thursday). I'm including the full text of what was forwarded to me below, other than removing Liz's e-mail address since it's not nice to post people's addresses on the web without their permission (opens them up to major spamming):

    Dear PDA Members,

    My name is Liz Kimmerly. I am the State Coordinator for the Progressive Democrats of America and I want to let you know that Oregon's only chapter of PDA will be meeting in Portland, this Saturday evening at 6:30. This will be held at 131 NW 2nd Ave in downtown Portland.

    We are holding this meeting with the intention of igniting the PDA movement in Portland and around the state. This will be a space for members to meet each other and to strengthen our PDA community.

    Items for this meeting's agenda:

    6:30 Meet and Greet 6:45 Endorsement process for Oregon's US Senate Race 7:40 Discuss the plans for PDA Portland, the Progressive Challenge 2008 (http://www.progressive2008.org/ ) and Portland bird-dogging in general.

    Your attendance and energy is appreciated.

    In solidarity,

    Liz Kimmerly Progressive Democrats of America

    [email address removed]

    NOTE: If you have already unsubscribed from the list, we apologize and ask you to unsubscribe again using the unsubscribe link at the very bottom of the page.

    Progressive Democrats of America is a grassroots PAC that works both inside the Democratic Party and outside in movements for peace and justice. Our goal: Extend the victory of Nov. 2006 into a permanent, progressive majority.

    PDA's advisory board includes seven members of Congress and activist leaders such as Tom Hayden, Medea Benjamin, Cindy Sheehan and Rev. Lennox Yearwood. More info: http://pdamerica.org

    Unsubscribe | Privacy Policy

  • (Show?)

    The behaviors alleged and described by Kari, if they can truly be attributed to Liz, are troubling. No question about that.

    However, it's clear that (a) we don't have all the facts here; (b) Kari has made a point of writing his account in the most prejudicial manner AND has the world's largest (if not the sharpest) ax to grind; (c) the emotional temperature of this primary campaign is so overheated that both sides are eager to believe the worst of each other; and (d) most of us here are under the illusion that what we write on blogs matters to anyone who doesn't read blogs.

    This is what I know: Steve and Jake are both very honorable men of great integrity and decency (as Jeff Merkley appears to be - I just don't know him as well). I am confident that neither of them would tolerate or condone behavior like that alleged here IF IT HAD ACTUALLY OCCURRED THE WAY KARI DESCRIBED IT. Because they are both caring and humane guys, though, and because Liz is someone they have known and trusted, it is entirely reasonable for them to take more than 24 hours over a holiday weekend to investigate the matter themselves, figure out as best they can what actually happened, and then, based on what they learn, decide what to do. In fact, it would be unreasonable for them to do otherwise.

    Liz mentioned to me a month ago that she was organizing a PDA chapter here and asked me if I wanted to join. I said sure. Later when I found out the date was 1/19 I also told her that I couldn't make a 1/19 meeting because I would be out of town (which I am - I'm in the international lounge at SFO waiting for a flight to Australia). I'm very sorry that I couldn't be there myself. My understanding is that it was originally scheduled for a different date but was then rescheduled to take place on the 19th so that these guys could be there as they traveled up the west coast. In other words, I was under the impression that this talk was the real central purpose of the meeting:

    U.S. Tour of Duty: The Iran Talks SCOTT RITTER JEFF COHEN Immediate Release Contact: Jeff Norman 310.842.8794 (office), 310.621.4659 (cell), [email protected] SCOTT RITTER, JEFF COHEN & EDWARD PECK TO SPEAK AT NATIONWIDE TOWN MEETINGS: What Mainstream Media Don't Tell Us About Iran, Iraq and U.S. Foreign Policy What: U.S. Tour of Duty presents The Iran Talks When: January 14 – February 28, 2007 Where: Various U.S. communities Join former UN weapons inspector SCOTT RITTER (author of "Target Iran"), media analyst JEFF COHEN (author of "Cable News Confidential"), and AMBASSADOR EDWARD PECK (former Chief of Mission in Iraq) for a discussion on the corporate media's coverage of the U.S . occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration's secret plans for the "War on Terror," and the need for diplomacy. Find out why Ritter, who visited Iran on a fact-finding mission, commented, "We are seeing history repeat itself." In addition to appearing at public forums, Ritter, Cohen and Peck are meeting with legislators, journalists, and high school students to stimulate a national dialogue about global engagement in general, and how to deal with Iran and Iraq in particular. Additional talks will be announced soon. For more information visit http://www.ustourofduty.org. The Iran Talks are co-sponsored by U.S. TOUR OF DUTY, PEACE ACTION, and FELLOWSHIP OF RECONCILIATION. Many other groups are co-sponsoring individual events. A book sale and signing will immediately follow each presentation. SCOTT RITTER, author of TARGET IRAN and IRAQ CONFIDENTIAL, was one of UNSCOM's most senior weapons inspectors in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, after having served for eight years as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. As a Marine, he conducted arms inspections in the former Soviet Union, and provided analysis of Iraq's missile capacity to General Schwarzkopf in the 1991 Gulf War. Nation Books is the publisher of "Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change" and "Iraq Confidential." "The important thing to know about Scott Ritter is that he was right." - Seymour Hersh JEFF COHEN worked for MSNBC as an on-air commentator and senior producer of "Donahue" until the show was terminated on the eve of the Iraq war. He founded Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), co-hosted CNN's "Crossfire," was a weekly panelist on Fox News Channel's "Newswatch," and appeared frequently on many national TV and radio programs, including "The Today Show," "Larry King Live," "The O'Reilly Factor," C-SPAN, and NPR. U.S. TOUR OF DUTY promotes dialogue about civic issues by organizing public forums, developing media strategies and producing audio/video content. http://www.ustourofduty.org PEACE ACTION is the nation's largest grassroots peace network, with chapters and affiliates in 30 states. It organizes its grassroots network to place pressure on Congress and the Administration through write-in campaigns, internet actions, citizen lobbying and direct action. http://www.peace-action.org FELLOWSHIP OF RECONCILIATION seeks to replace violence, war, racism, and economic injustice with nonviolence, peace, and justice. It is an interfaith organization committed to active nonviolence as a transforming way of life and as a means of radical change. http://www.forusa.org

    Liz had mentioned to me her hope that Steve could get the PDA national endorsement but at no time was I personally under the impression that tonight's meeting was to be an "endorsement meeting." Believe me or not, as you choose, but that's what I knew about it.

    Looking at the agenda just posted above, "endorsement process" strikes me as a wholly legitimate subject of discussion at the organizational meeting of a political organization in an election year. That circles back to what I said above about each side being eager to believe the worst about each other. Whatever.

  • Hawthorne (unverified)
    (Show?)

    James X,

    Really? Let's take a look at what you said.

    "It's one of the more significant stories, Hawthorne, because it's not something like "SOS candidates disagree" or "AG candidate makes proposal" that any newspaper also could tell you."

    Well, sure. Roseburg is more significant than Sutherlin, but that doesn't make it Chicago.

    "This is original information BlueOregon has that others don't on a live breaking story"

    The story was broken by a real paper by a real journalist. Curious that his story didn't take the same tone and make the same conclusions as the one here. Strange that this has not been on the front page of all the local papers given its importance. Why is that? a) it's really not that important except to a bunch of insiders b) the actual journalists are waiting for actual facts

    "clearly so hot that official representatives of both campaigns and the organization in question personally commented to this very blog post."

    Erm. They've commented on lots of blog posts. I'm sure that Carla and Jake are both hot, but their choice to comment on a blog post at Blue O does not make the post hot.

  • (Show?)

    Stephanie V, so how do you reconcile your interpretation of the "agenda" in the email from Liz forwarded to Jenni which you take the term "endorsement process" from, with the words in the email from Liz to the Merkley campaign on Tuesday (the first they were even made aware of this event) where it it states:

    I'm writing to let you know that the Portland chapter of the Progressive Democrats of America will be meeting on Saturday, January 19th to decide on its endorsement for Oregon's US Senate race. You are all welcome to state your case and will be given a 10 minute window to present yourselves to the chapter. (emphasis mine)

    If you joined the PDA at Liz's suggestion, did you receive the email notification that has been asserted that Liz sent out to the PDA membership announcing this meeting?

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Stephanie V | Jan 19, 2008 8:18:27 PM

    I reject this statement:

    (b) Kari has made a point of writing his account in the most prejudicial manner AND has the world's largest (if not the sharpest) ax to grind;

    Secondly,a random email that says nothing about a PDA meeting but rather has to do with speakers talking about Iran doesn't prove anything, let alone Kimmerly's innocence.

    Thirdly:

    Because they are both caring and humane guys, though, and because Liz is someone they have known and trusted, it is entirely reasonable for them to take more than 24 hours over a holiday weekend to investigate the matter themselves, figure out as best they can what actually happened, and then, based on what they learn, decide what to do. In fact, it would be unreasonable for them to do otherwise.

    If that was the case, a Novick media person should post here and elsewhere that they are conducting an internal investigation to establish the facts and that if they are congruent with reports, that Kimmerly will be dismissed and an apology will be offered.

  • Jack Murray (unverified)
    (Show?)
    I am confident that neither of them would tolerate or condone behavior like that alleged here IF IT HAD ACTUALLY OCCURRED THE WAY KARI DESCRIBED IT

    That doesn't quite amount to an exoneration of Liz Kimmerly. Aside from Jake Weigler's dismissive response, we haven't seen any action by the campaign or the candidate to address this situation.

    I think we all agree here that Steve Novick deserves the benefit of the doubt here, though it's clear that Jake did know about what was going on. I hope Novick chooses to address these facts soon.

    Meanwhile, I think it's somewhat fallacious to deny the occurrence of events and facts based on personalities and character sketches.

  • Hawthorne (unverified)
    (Show?)

    "If that was the case, a Novick media person should post here and elsewhere that they are conducting an internal investigation to establish the facts and that if they are congruent with reports, that Kimmerly will be dismissed and an apology will be offered."

    Yes, they should RIGHT NOW, because the people DEMAND it!

    Give me a break. Put your rope back in the bag and simmer down. Why the rush to judgement? Some people actually take a holiday over a holiday weekend. Hard to believe when you are following the political news cycle and hits to your own blog 23-7, I know.

    The only thing simmering here is a handful of activists who are so tuned in to watching that they've lost perspective.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Stephanie V | Jan 19, 2008 8:18:27 PM ... Looking at the agenda just posted above...

    The agenda in the email from Liz that was forwarded to Jenni mentions nothing about any guest speakers talking about Iran, whose press release you somehow thought was relevant to post here.

  • James X. (unverified)
    (Show?)

    Hawthorne, if this issue isn't important, you're welcome to stop talking yourself.

  • Hawthorne (unverified)
    (Show?)

    James,

    This from the guy who early in the thread said:

    "Assuming this is true, clearly this shouldn't have happened, and I agree that Novick's campaign would have been much better served without it happening. But I would prefer to ask for an explanation first. I hope people can hold their tongues on unproductive comments, too." ?

  • James X. (unverified)
    (Show?)

    I thought it was rather common sense. If this discussion is so unimportant, you're free not to participate rather than go after the rest of us for participating.

  • LT (unverified)
    (Show?)

    When I read someone in one of the above comments said this endorsement might not be the best thing in the world, I went to their website. I'm not sure it is the best thing for winning in downstate Oregon.

    Lots of Californians on the list of board members, and lots of other people who might not persuade undecided voters who are not KPOJ listeners. Smith will not be defeated only with the votes of people who voted against him in the past. Is PDA really a group which will win over voters who are not true believer activist straight party Democrats? The endorsement could turn up in a GOP or Smith ad, "my opponent is endorsed by a group led by Tom Hayden and Cindy Sheehan, and we know what kind of people they are" or some other such rot.

    I'm not real big on endorsements by national groups in a primary.

    What was very interesting was to click on Oregon under the list of states and find what was listed there. Someone who does not follow politics closely enough to know Liz K's "day job" might wonder if they had read this website and then later learned Liz is a campaign staff member.

    At Jenni's suggestion, I removed the phone number and email address from what is copied below--people who want those can go to the PDA website.

    This is what the PDA website said under Oregon:

    Oregon Chapter News No chapter news has been reported.

    PDA State Coordinator For support in organizing within your state, contact: Liz Kimmerly

    Chapters Oregon PDA Portland Liz Kimmerly

  • petrichor (unverified)
    (Show?)

    There is one factual disagreement here that hasn't been resolved.

    kari, there are numerous factual disagreements, and more facts yet to come in.

    your post was a political hack job, which is fine--this is politics--but don't pretend it is not. you did not even update your post to reflect the new information that came in from the eugene register-guard.

    beyond the post, i just glanced through the message thread here and realized there's not even really a discussion, what there is, is a well oiled attack machine. if you removed the comments from merkley attack bots bdunn, lestatdlc, james x, jack murray, kevin, and a smattering of torridjoe and pat malach trying to represent the other side, you'd have almost nothing.

    nothing. that's because until we get the full story, there is nothing here.

    i will admit, you guys are good at the one-two blog attack, and comment swarm follow-up.

    petr

  • Dannyk (unverified)
    (Show?)

    Rove is behind this one fer sure.

    Kari wrote: “Tim told me ‘that's not how we do things here.’ He also told me that Liz was an ‘overenthusiastic volunteer’ who clearly hadn't read the instructions for PDA endorsements.”

    Or had she? hmmmmm

    It was a pleasant meeting. We’ll be voting on endorsements at the next PDA meeting.

    Will Liz be there?

    Proud member of PDA since 2004

  • (Show?)

    I attended the PDA event tonight. I'll write about it tomorrow when the nausea has passed.

    Not once did Liz practice anything close to full disclosure. In fact, an old man interrupted her when she rose to address the meeting towards the end and asked her, "who are you?" She responded with, "my name is Liz" and proceeded to describe herself as the state coordinator of this PDA chapter.

    Mind you, during the entire meeting, everyone who formally addressed the meeting stated their full name (first and last) and what their affiliation was, both past and present. Liz game only her first name and not once did she indicate that she has anything at all to do with the Novick campaign, much less that she collects paychecks from Novick.

    Steve Novick, for his part, didn't let on that Liz has any connection to his campaign. Not even a hint!

    Considering the grief that Stephanie, TJ, Pat and the rest of the Novick partisans give Kari anytime he omits anything less than total 100% disclosure, it was nauseating to see the entire Novick campaign staff present(at least one other was there in addition to Steve himself) go through the entire meeting without informing anyone that "oh, by the way... Liz here is a PAID staffer for the Novick campaign."

    Nothing, nada, zilch!

    So when my fellow progressives witness the big crocodile tears of faux outrage by Pat, TJ, Stephanie, et al over lack of full disclosure, know that you're being played for an utter fool.

  • (Show?)

    Oh... speaking of lacking full disclosure...

    "Hawthorne", you wouldn't happen to be a Novick intern named Henry would you?

  • Hawthorne (unverified)
    (Show?)

    Kevin,

    Nope.

    You have a reporter's nose, I can tell ;)

  • LT (unverified)
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    Thanks, Kevin.

    I have to react to the comment that bdunn is a Merkley attack bot. He is a very nice young man who I met during the 2006 election. Unless you have seen him with a Merkley pin or bumper sticker, don't make assumptions.

    Saying that a statement like,

    "If that was the case, a Novick media person should post here and elsewhere that they are conducting an internal investigation to establish the facts and that if they are congruent with reports, that Kimmerly will be dismissed and an apology will be offered."

    makes one a "Merkley attack bot" shows a mindset of "with us or against us" which will no more defeat Gordon Smith than that attitude in Pres. W did great things for US foreign policy.

    Those of you who support Novick, be warned. If the attitude of your campaign is "agree with everything Steve and the campaign say or do or we will call you names", don't think that is going to help your campaign.

    As Steve surely noticed in 1996 (and has happened in other years with a variety of campaigns) that sort of verbal peer pressure after Bruggere won the primary didn't gain votes in the general election. It did gain support for 3rd party candidates.

    Should Steve's campaign win, you might find a hard time gaining volunteers. Most people have a limited amount of spare time. If they choose to spend that spare time on the presidential race, one of the other statewide races, their local legislative race, or something outside of politics, nothing that Stephanie and the rest of the Novick blogging supporters can say or do will force them to donate their time to the US Senate nominee if they choose to do something else.

    In the Lefty Blogs column on the side of the page is

    Democratic Senate intensity, Ridenbaugh Press, 12:20 p.m.

    The author doesn't take sides in the Senate race.

  • Hawthorne (unverified)
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    LT,

    I went back through the comments to see where bdunn was called a bot. Can you show me where?

    As for the Ridenbaugh Press reference, right on. As I said before, let's wait to see what the FACTS say.

  • (Show?)

    Ben of Witigonen was there too.

    You can read his post about it here.

  • (Show?)

    He is a very nice young man who I met during the 2006 election. Unless you have seen him with a Merkley pin or bumper sticker, don't make assumptions.

    I have had the opportunity to meet bdunn. And he is definitely a Merkley supporter. I've seen him work the table, and I believe with both a shirt and a button on. He's probably one of the biggest Merkley for U.S. Senate supporters I've met.

    We may disagree on candidates, but we've had good discussions and agreements on other topics. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I come across bdunn working on the same candidate/issue/project that I am. I'm glad to see more young people like him getting involved. After all, a lot of us "young people" are turning 30.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: petrichor | Jan 19, 2008 10:41:20 PM if you removed the comments from merkley attack bots bdunn, lestatdlc

    I defy anyone to point to a single "attack" I have EVER launched against Novick unless you think calling for the negative campaigning by his volunteer blogger group members time and time again is "attacking". I raised money for his campaign and was a supporter of his candidacy until, with tacit support of his campaign, his online blog group member Web Wonks 4 Novick began going full tilt negative from the day Merkely formally announced. The only thing that could be remotely misconstrued as being an "attack bot" in any of this by me, is ringing the alarm bells for months that the negative attacks and dishonest spin and misdirection by his volunteer blogger group is a bad direction for him to take and is burning bridges he can ill afford.

    Unless you somehow view refuting the negative smears and dishonest arguments leveled against Merkley, and have damn near bitten through my tongue on an almost daily basis to not say a negative word about the man. I ask that you point to my "attack bot" behavior with specific examples, because it simply is not true.

  • (Show?)

    Posted by: Jenni Simonis | Jan 19, 2008 11:41:48 PM

    Jenni's comment above is accurate, bdunn is a supporter of Merkley. I don't think that was ever legitimately in doubt, and I second your point about getting more and more college age people into being actively involved in progressive and Democratic politics.

  • LT (unverified)
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    Hawthorne, here is your answer:

    Posted by: petrichor | Jan 19, 2008 10:41:20 PM

    Let's see what Steve says about this. In the Sunriver speech video, he was very outspoken about a vote Jeff made in 2003. This issue is about something a Novick staffer did in 2008.

    It may well be that there is nothing to this story but innocent mistakes. But those of us who have been blasted here at BO for not agreeing with Stephanie, TJ, etc. and their view of Steve are not required to be quiet until all the facts are in. The phrase "if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck" comes to mind.

    Liz K is listed on the PDA website. Liz K is a Novick staff member. Those are facts.

    Many of us have lived through situations in primaries or elsewhere that a meeting notice was not sent out in a timely fashion. Many of us know the concept of "reservoir of good will". This situation needs to be clarified soon or it will deplete Steve's reservoir of good will. He may be right on every issue under the sun, but if someone on his staff did something like this and he does not take responsibility to deal with the problem, it brings to mind an old saying "when they act like that, you know they are losing". Steve should know how many political experts have said "if you have a problem, get all the information you have out in public as soon as possible".

    Sometime in the next week there should be a statement from the Novick campaign on all this.

    Why should we not believe what Kevin said about actually attending a meeting? If I had seen Steve or Liz at that meeting, they would have not have enjoyed the questions I asked them to their faces. This is a Novick campaign problem and we need to learn what happened from the Novick campaign. And "wait for the facts" should be a very short time--days if possible.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Hawthorne | Jan 19, 2008 11:32:29 PM LT, I went back through the comments to see where bdunn was called a bot. Can you show me where?

    petrichor said it here, and called me an attack bot as well, along with a list of others. Which I reject in this post above.

  • (Show?)

    Ugh...

    I defy anyone to point to a single "attack" I have EVER launched against Novick unless you think calling for the negative campaigning by his volunteer blogger group members time and time again is "attacking"

    Should read:

    I defy anyone to point to a single "attack" I have EVER launched against Novick unless you think calling for the negative campaigning by his volunteer blogger group members to end, time and time again is "attacking"
  • (Show?)

    I'm glad that Jenni chimed in here. I'm angry and disgusted at what I witnessed tonight by members of the Novick campaign and by tactics of some of his online supporters. BUT... I want to say as clearly as I know how that in no way do I conflate the ethical morass of some in that campaign to everyone who supports Novick.

    Jenni Simonis, Charlie Burr and Bill Bodden, just to name three that readily spring to mind, are all Novick supporters who have, in my estimation, been pillars of integrity and are each in their own way as fine of an example of progressive Oregonians as one could hope to find anywhere. Anyone trying to tar them with the ethical lapses of Liz Kimmerly and Steve Novick ought to assume that I won't idly stand by and watch it happen.

  • (Show?)

    Good point Kevin, I know Jenni from the Dean campaign and have always viewed Jenni as a straight-shooter.

  • Hayes Ingraham (unverified)
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    Wow, go away for a weekend and by the time you finally get ahold of a family member's iPhone you discover BO has erupted.

    I've got some questions though. How is Liz Kimmerly getting off so lightly, with people saying she was just too enthusiastic or failed to read the directions? She is a paid, professional political activist. Not only should she know that there is an ethical conflict, but she was starting a chapter of a national political organization.

    Wouldn't the first thing you do be to read the directions? We're not talking about putting together a desk from Ikea. It's an endorsement relating to your boss. Wouldn't one read the directions carefully(or at least at all) so that one would try to avoid any appearance of wrong doing?

    What's past is past, however. What i'm more interested in now is what happens. How the campaigns, especially Steve's, respond. Though from Kevin's report on the first PDA meeting, I am less than encouraged at how this will be resolved.

  • (Show?)

    Well that explains it right there, Mitch. I'm a fellow Deaniac going back to before I caught the blogging bug. In fact I was first turned onto blogging by a couple guys who ran the old "Independents for Dean" blog!

    It's a damn shame he's not sitting in the Oval Office instead of that shrub...

  • (Show?)

    Hayes,

    I spoke to Jon Isaacs, Jeff Merkley's campaign manager after the meeting. He told me that everyone on that campaign had to read and sign a detailed and explicit ethics policy before being hired and that if any of them had done anything even remotely like what Liz has done here they'd have been fired. Period. He was very emphatic about it.

    So this seems to be as much a campaign culture difference as anything else.

    Where my mind wanders when I ponder a culture of "the ends justify the means" is the every-six-years conversion to moderate positions that Gordon Smith seems to have.

    Perhaps I'm too idealistic about it but it seems to me that all political candidates fall into either one of two camps.

    1. You can trust them.

    2. You can't trust them.

    I have no use for those in the second camp, even if they're saying things that I want to hear. In fact, I trust those even less. I would much rather vote for a candidate who says things I don't necessarily agree with but whom I trust to be honest with me than a candidate saying what I want to hear but whom I don't know when or where I can trust what he/she says. At least with the honest one I know where I stand and can plan accordingly. The dishonest one is only on my side until he/she sees a greater benefit to selling me down the river.

    Jeff Merkley is clearly in the first camp. Unelectable though I'm positive she is, Candy Neville is solidly in the first camp too. Gordon Smith is in the second camp for stunningly obvious reasons. I'm honestly not sure where Steve Novick comes down and after tonight I'm not at all sure that I'll ever be able to fully trust him.

  • (Show?)

    LT, Probably this would not help downstate if you say so, but this seems like one of the cases where your frequent "normal people don't pay attention to inside baseball" line might apply. I'm pretty sure that Kari regards PDA as important for GOTV kind of work. What the geo distribution of PDA is would affect where that would matter.

    On the timing of the formation of the PDA chapter, I agree with Mitch that it's not even clear if it happened before tonight. Moses Ross above both says that he was not involved in chapter organizing (suggesting it had occurred) and describes how he will act if is involved in chapter organizing (future). What did Jim Carpenter mean in saying earlier this week -- that there was go-ahead to have a first meeting tonight? Liz K's e-mail Jenni S. got speaks of "igniting" a PDA movement -- that could be launching a chapter, or taking a formally existing chapter to a new level of substance.

    The use of the phrase "endorsement process" in that relatively early e-mail muddies the "endorsement will happen" e-mail to the Merkley campaign somewhat in my mind. Getting an "endorsement process" going could be a legitimate order of business if there wasn't meant to be an actual endorsement. Overall I have an impression of a not terribly-well-organized organizing process.

    Some PDA members got notifications, apparently, and some didn't. That is disturbing. What I would like to know most at this point, if it were possible, is whether there is a pattern in who got notified and who didn't that would suggest an effort to stack an endorsement. Was there pro-Novick selectivity?

    Katie, the question is not only whether or not an endorsement occurred. It also is whether Liz K tried to hijack an endorsement process in favor of her candidate. There are a lot of circumstances that make it look as if she might have. And yes that is unethical if it happened, both in terms of the campaigns, and in terms of Liz Ks duties to PDA. If she did this it would be a significant betrayal of PDA. Given her apparent strong ties to them predating Novick involvement, that might suggest a reason to think she wouldn't do it.

    To me the question of whether it was a hijacking effort turns on whether Liz K a) had the ability and b) made the effort to stack who would turn up.

    I guess we know she had access to the PDA individual member list. Do we know if she had access to information that would let her identify Novick supporters out of the main list? if so, the answer to a) is yes. If not, much less clear. Whether she actually made such an effort would depend on knowing who got notices.

  • (Show?)

    From what I understand from the footer of the e-mail, it was sent via the PDA system. Typically, those systems work to where you can blast everyone on the list. All the time I've worked as an organizer on something like this I couldn't narrow down who the e-mail list based on names. Sometimes I could select people by city, rep district, etc. But that was about as narrow of a selection as I could get.

    Usually the only way I could target individual people was to send them an individual e-mail through the system. But the footer clearly shows it to be a bulk mail thing and not an individual e-mail.

    My guess is that some people didn't get it because their e-mail was set incorrectly, it got caught by the spam filter, etc.

    Since I wasn't involved in any of this, I can't say for sure this was the case with the PDA e-mail. I've just worked with a lot of these systems and how they typically work.

  • James X. (unverified)
    (Show?)

    I'm particularly amused to learn that I'm a Merkley attack bot. I've said before that I started out as a swing voter, and then that my swing got pushed a bit into the Merkley camp over the 2003 Iraq resolution thing, and later that I've moved farther into the Merkley camp, but I'm on no list, I've made no commitments, I've attended no events, and nobody here knows who I am. I recently made among the most positive comments about Novick's advertising and fundraising, and in the past I've praised Novick's position statements, criticized Blue Oregon as having too many pro-Merkley posts in relation to Novick posts, and pressed Merkley for more facts and figures in his policies. You can attack me for having an opinion, but I think it's off the mark to call me a campaign's attack bot.

  • (Show?)

    LT: I think my support of Merkley is fairly well know especially to those who read Forward Oregon, but I appreciate the benefit of the doubt and the kind words.

    Perichtor: LT can attest that I am no bot, but rather I am a real live boy < /snark>. Seriously, I don't understand how all Merkley supporters are "bots" and similar name calling isn't leveled at Novick supporters. The ad homiens are just over the top. I encourage people who disagree with me to use logic, reason, and evidence to dispute my claims. Unfortunately, this primary race has had very little productive debate and a whole lot of name calling. How bout dealing with the substance of my points?

    Hawthorne: Yes they should have responded immediately. This fiasco has huge ethical implications in addition to being a PR disaster. It has been two days. The Novick campaign had the time to show up to the PDA meeting they could have addressed the PR crisis in a cursory manner like I wrote.

    Jenni: We have worked on the same cause, the Bus Project, though not at the same time. I expect to see you at the Tazo building in the future.

    As long as were throwing out people we respect on the other side Andrew Palmbeck, despite our inability to get a good game of beer pong going, is someone that I respect a lot, as he usually makes quite thoughtful comments.

  • Daniel Spiro (unverified)
    (Show?)

    This thread has become quite the cesspool. And it started with the title "Fake endorsement backfires."

    I have no idea whether this involves dirty tricks by a Novick staffer. Then again, I doubt Kari does either. There are obviously facts to dig up here, and perhaps they will indeed turn out to be inculpatory (it's not like I know all the players involved so I can't attest for them all). But this I can say: If any Novick supporter says here that there has been an inappropriate rush to judgment, they are accused of being Rove-ean. So what's the point of even opening a dialogue?

    One Merkely supporter after another has used this thread as an opportunity to bash Novick and his campaign (not just the staffer at issue), and in the recent posts, the only concession that I have read is, in essence, that "not every Novick supporter is a scumbag." Well, that's quite the concession, isn't it.

    Talk about Rove-ean. You guys must REALLY want to win this thing for Jeff. In the "worst" way, as they say.

    What I plan to do is get to the bottom of these facts so that I learn them for myself, rather than to make political hay out of them. But this much I can tell you: Steve Novick is a trustworthy person. I don't know all his staffers, but I know him ... a heck of a lot better than Kari will ever know him. And to those who have condemned Novick for this, I'll match his morality against yours any time. Any time.

  • James X. (unverified)
    (Show?)

    Daniel, nobody called anybody a scumbag. I was also going to compliment Jenni (the only Novick staffer/consultant whose work I'm familiar with), but now that I know my very morality may be challenged for it I guess I'll hold my tongue. How can you criticize Merkley supporters for complimenting Novick supporters?

  • Pat Malach (unverified)
    (Show?)

    It's funny to listent o keving talk about integrity up thread.

    Over at loaded Orygun, Senate Guru 2008 attempted to smear Novick with an accusation that he recently plagiarized rhetoric from Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Turns out, Novick's been using the line in question since the first official day of his campaign nearly a year ago.

    Even after that fact was pointed out and Guru's diary was clearly rendered bunk, kevin popped in to "recommend" it and move it up the page.

    Integrity eh, kev?

  • James X. (unverified)
    (Show?)

    Why do some commenters seem to hate other commenters? It seems totally unnecessary and unproductive. I never even noticed it till this campaign.

  • Pat Malach (unverified)
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    Does pointing out someone's hypocrisy mean you hate them?

  • messieur t (unverified)
    (Show?)

    James,

    I've been reading DailyKos, and I've noticed some really hateful comments about Republicans on their site.

    Can't we all just get along?

    Back to the endorsement navel gazing game. More lint?

  • James X. (unverified)
    (Show?)

    Sorry, I guess I'm just a frail little blogger.

  • Daniel Spiro (unverified)
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    James ...

    I'm sorry if my last post wasn't as diplomatic as it should have been. I sincerely appreciate concessions that people make, however small they are. When someone says -- and I'm using hyperbole -- "maybe Liz is a jerk but I know a friend of Novick and I like him," I sincerely appreciate that a Merkley person is saying something nice about a Novick person. Frankly, the one person I've spoken to who I trust who has spoken nicely about Merkely (remember, I'm not an Oregonian so I had never heard of Merkley several months ago) ... is Novick himself! I appreciated when he said those words, and don't wish to discourage you from being as magnanimous as possible under the circumstances.

    My concern, however, is that this thread has provided an opportunity for Merkley people (perhaps not you, but many) to treat Novick like he's unfit for dog catcher, let alone the Senate. And that's friggen ridiculous. You'd think from reading some of the comments that Novick just got caught robbing a bank. He happens to be one of the most ethical people I know, and I doubt there's 20 people in the world who know Novick better than I do.

    I won't "rush to judgment" by poo-pooing what happened without knowing more facts. While I love Steve, I love the truth more (see my blog "The Empathic Rationalist," or "The Creed Room," my published philosophical novel, if you want to know that my life does not revolve around Steve Novick). But I'm hardly impressed with the evidence for the prosecution here. If I were a cynical type, I'd speculate that certain Merkley backers are pissed that Novick has come up with a REALLY good advertisement, and so they're trying to rip into his morality based on threadbare evidence. After all, the issue here isn't a Novick staffer, it's Novick himself.

    Let's get more facts from people who aren't paid campaign operatives who shoot first "Fake endorsement backfires" -- and ask questions later. More to the point, let's keep our eyes on the ball. If people have audio-tapes of Novick counseling staffers to procure fake endorsements, then bring them on. Otherwise, you might want to remember that even some of us Novick folks who didn't like Merkley's vote on the resolution have said that it hardly disqualifies Merkley's candidacy, and this crap I've read at Blue Oregon about a staffer who works for Novick hardly disqualifies Novick's candidacy either.

    My advice to Merkley's supporters is that they spend less time bathing in Merkley's DSCC money and criticizing Novick (and not necessarily in that order) ... and more time telling the rest of us what makes Merkley an outstanding candidate. Because if he's not, even if he beats Novick, he's going down in November to the better-funded, better-looking, and supposedly moderate Gordon Smith.

  • (Show?)
    My advice to Merkley's supporters is that they spend less time bathing in Merkley's DSCC money and criticizing Novick (and not necessarily in that order) ... and more time telling the rest of us what makes Merkley an outstanding candidate. Because if he's not, even if he beats Novick, he's going down in November to the better-funded, better-looking, and supposedly moderate Gordon Smith.

    That's a huge part of the irony here, Daniel. It has never been Merkley supporters bathing in the issue of DSCC money. That has consistently been the sole domain of Novick supporters. And the vast majority of the time when Merkley supporters are criticizing Novick it has been a reaction to Novick criticizing Merkley.

    Left to our own devices, we Merkley supporters have ALWAYS focused on Merkley's positives exactly as you suggest.

    Perhaps you and your fellow Novick supporters would be wise to follow your own advice.

  • (Show?)

    Bottom line: Which D candidate for US Senate can defeat Gordon Smith?

  • (Show?)

    LT,

    bdunn may be a nice young man, probably is since he has testimonials from a neutral (you) and a supporter of Steve Novick (Jenni). But he has been a relentlessly aggressive critic of Steve Novick on the order of torridjoe on the other side, and equally quick to seek out marginally plausible views for things favorable to "his" side in the comment debates here. Take his first post on this thread. He starts by raising the "What did Steve know?" question that is legitimate but aggressive in the context of Kari's comments, and ends thus

    With unethical tactics like this it is clear that Steve Novick cannot be trusted with that crucial task.

    imputing that they were Steve's tactics, i.e. showing that his original question was only rhetorical and not the legitimate genuine factual question.

    Mitch, the one place I see you attacking is where you blur the line between bloggers and the actual Novick campaign.

    That said, I find Kevin's report of the PDA launch disturbing, partly because Steve was directly involved.

    I do wonder, rather idly, why Kevin apparently didn't bring out the relevant information himself? It might have been a good thing for PDA Oregon, but maybe there's another way to look at it.

    Was Merkley there? Anyone from the Merkley campaign? Any Merkley supporters other than Kevin? Why didn't somebody bring out the situation?

    But that question has no bearing on what Liz Kimmerly did and didn't do earlier, or what Steve Novick is, isn't or should be doing about it. Or on the meaning of the reported non-disclosure by Kimmerly or Novick of the relationship.

    I think the PDA people need to look at this situation, because if Liz Kimmerly is not being open about her affiliations, it has the potential to be damaging to an organization that we should all want to function for the long haul and not only in relation to this one primary.

    If Liz Kimmerly really cares about PDA, she should step back and get someone else to be coordinator.

  • (Show?)
    and this crap I've read at Blue Oregon about a staffer who works for Novick hardly disqualifies Novick's candidacy either.

    Daniel, Steve Novick was there at the supposed PDA meeting last night. He had ample opportunity to practice full disclosure or to instruct his employee, Liz Kimmerly, to practice full disclosure. He chose not to do either.

    Liz Kimmerly is responsible for her own ethical choices.

    Steve Novick is responsible for his own ethical choices.

    That he willfully chose to go along with a blatent conflict of interests says a great deal about him and his own values, just as Liz Kimmerly's role in all this says a great deal about her own values.

  • (Show?)

    Chris,

    The short answer to why this stuff wasn't hashed out last night was that we were trying very hard to err on the side of caution and common cause. We didn't want to have the launch of the first Oregon chapter of a very important progressive organization devolve into an intra-campaign spat. Particularly since it seemed pretty obvious that at least half of the crowd knew what the backstory was.

    Nobody on any side seemed interested in souring the enthusiasm of the assembled progressives with a spat. Moses Ross, who took over after Liz started the meeting (and later turned it back over to her at the end) set the tone in this respect by very obliquely referring to the controversy and seemingly deliberately avoiding getting into the details. The three Merkley supporters there honored his apparent wish and, frankly, I think we both agreed and empathized with his apparent reasoning.

    Jon Isaacs, Merkley's campaign manager, was the only member of the Merkley campaign in attendance. He tried repeatedly to get folks to take a step back and not rush into what he termed an overly politicized situation. He offered it as his own personal opinion and went out of his way to praise both the PDA and the larger progressive cause and what motivates us all to be progressives in the first place. Like myself and Ben of Witigonen (the only other Merkley supporter in attendance), Jon seemed very keen to avoid saying anything that would reflect badly on the national PDA or bring it into any further controversy than Liz's shenanigans had already caused.

    Bottom line: Liz Kimmerly and Moses Ross ran the meeting. Both knew the full scope of what had gone down. The primary onus of responsibility for getting into the specifics is on them.

    For his part, my sense is that Moses Ross was very much trying his damndest to make the very best possible of a bad situation. He meant well, of that I have zero doubt. But, honestly I have to say that he was being very nieve about the implications of how this chapter came to be founded in the first place. He sought to avoid the appearance of impropriety by insisting that any endorsement process be delayed a minimum of 30 days. But that doesn't do anything at all to address the inherent conflict of interests posed by Liz Kimmerly continuing to be the state coordinator of record. Indeed, Moses repeatedly deferred to Liz as the state coordinator.

    As long as Liz Kimmerly remains the state coordinator of this alleged chapter of the PDA, no endorsement by this alleged chapter can possibly be credible. I just don't see any way around that reality.

    Any tainted endorsement by this alleged chapter will reflect badly on the national PDA. I just don't see any way around that reality either.

    All indications are that the Novick campaign, top to bottom, stand willing to throw the national PDA under a bus for their own perceived gain.

    Oregon deserves much better!

  • JQP (unverified)
    (Show?)

    Wow, this has been an eye opener about the relevancy of B.O. commentators to progressive politics. Namely zero. Almost two hundred comments about efforts to get an endorsement from an organization that is an irrelevancy itself.

    Kari, if you're so concerned by candidates deceiving voters, why don't you go on the warpath about this: During the campaign for Measure 50, Merkley and all the leadership repeatedly sounded the alarm that we have a health care emergency of uninsured children, which we do. The published agendas by the Senate and House Democrats include absolutely no mention of any effort to push legislation that would raise just enough matching state funds, through more appropriate means than Measure 50 would have, to get SCHIP and other federal funds to insure children. This was initiated as an emergency session and children without health care is more of an emergency than many things on their announced agenda.

    The word I've heard from the health care advocates I know, you know, folks who actually care about such things as getting health care for uninsured children first, is that this issue seems to have been all but forgotten. They told me Merkley's office directed that no legislation such as this, i.e. important legislation that might generate political debate because it is important could be introduced. Apparently, according to the understanding of those health care advocates, injecting controversy into the special session, such as fighting for matching funds to insure children, would complicate his campaign for U.S. Senate.

    Ironically, while I was wasting my time reading the mindless drivel here because I was misled by Kari's post that something untoward actually had happened like an actual fake endorsement by a significant organization, I was alerted by Radical Russ on 620KPOJ about this: Although Merkley apparently had no qualms about quashing any effort to actually do something real about a health care emergency Measure 50 supporters and the Democratic leadership screamed about, he had no problems allowing another Democrat to legalize job discrimination against medical marijuana patients.

  • petrichor (unverified)
    (Show?)

    ok, "attack bots" was a bit harsh, i apologize, you guys definitely do much more than just attack.

    so not only was the "attack bot" comment unwarranted, but it detracted from the main point: that there is a handful of hardcore merkley supporters who seem to be anywhere and everywhere in blog comments dominating the duscussion.

    maybe it's not coordinated, but regardless, the commenting is relentless, on point and ubiquitous.

    in regards to the PDA meeting, it was reported that kimmerley did not disclose her affiliation with novick campaign. i would think she would want to go out of her way to do that at this point. however--it sounds like she handed the meeting over to others when her dual role may have been an issue, so...

  • (Show?)

    OK -- so I've been a strong Novick supporter, I've volunteered, I'm on all of the lists, even wrote a pro-Novick post for this blog, but I REALLY, REALLY wish they would respond to what's going on here, beyond what Jake has done. I ask the following questions because I want to still believe in the campaign.

    Why did Liz not disclose her alliance? Why has she yet to respond, considering the issue is being covered now on several blogs? Why did Steve allow her to continue without disclosure? Why did this whole issue go seemingly unaddressed at the PDA meeting?

    Also, why did the Novick campaign basically blacklist Kari -- while he supports Merkeley, isn't he at least worth talking to? Particularly when a response to this story might have gone a long ways towards diffusing what has now turned into a bit of a forest fire? While Kari and I may have planned on voting differently, his role within activist communities and the Democratic Party should at least have earned him a returned phone call.

    So, again, please, Novick campaign, coming from someone who has been a true blue supporter, and coming from a place of great respect, could you all take a minute and answer some of these questions? I want to stop (I say so hopefully) worrying.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Chris Lowe | Jan 20, 2008 10:12:27 AM Mitch, the one place I see you attacking is where you blur the line between bloggers and the actual Novick campaign.

    As I have touched on before, most of the most aggressive bloggers here who attack Merkley as Novick supporters are part of the" Web Wonks 4 Novick" which has tacit approval and active participation by Jake Weigler and Liz Kimmerly. I also would like to see you point out any "negative attacks" I have leveled against Novick supporters, unless you think refuting negative attacks against Merkely by said bloggers who have the tacit approval of the Novick campaign is "negative attacks".

    So it is rather interesting that you have that impression, and I challenge anyone to point out a negative attack I have leveled against Novick or his campaign, even when aggressively calling bullshit on the steady stream of outright negative attacks launched by Novick bloggers who are part of the "Wed Wonks 4 Novick" group, which has active participation by both Liz Kimmerly and Jake Weigler.

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    Thanks Kevin. That makes sense. Saving PDA from this debacle so that it can matter long after this primary is what's important.

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    At 5:18 a.m. today, Daniel Spiro wrote: "Steve Novick is a trustworthy person. I don't know all his staffers, but I know him ... a heck of a lot better than Kari will ever know him. And to those who have condemned Novick for this, I'll match his morality against yours any time."

    I don't know how well you know Steve, but I've known him for nearly a decade - and have worked as allies on any number of campaigns. That's why I wrote this in the original post: "Steve Novick himself would never condone these sorts of dirty tricks. He needs to figure out who on his campaign is responsible, and remove them from his operation." I have yet to "condemn" Steve Novick personally on this, but he needs to clean house to get on the side of goodness here. Ethical leadership is hard, and sometimes it means cutting loose someone who has worked hard for you, but it's necessary to maintain an ethical organization. I'm confident Steve will make the right move here.

    At 11:41, Kristin asks "Also, why did the Novick campaign basically blacklist Kari -- while he supports Merkeley, isn't he at least worth talking to?"

    Actually, I respect their choice here. I'm not just a Merkley supporter. I'm a consultant to the Merkley campaign. Also, I'll note that I did NOT call them for comment this time - because the last time I called to confirm a source on something Steve had said, Jake Weigler said (and I'm paraphrasing here), "I'm not going to comment about this to a Merkley campaign consultant. If a real reporter calls me, I'll talk to them." Which is absolutely fair. What's not fair is then complaining that I didn't call them for comment. It's either one way or the other.

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    I couldn't agree more, Chris.

    For what ever it's worth, it was very hard to bite my tongue last night. Jon Isaac's frustration was very evident too, as was Ben's. But ultimately I think we made the right choice. Considering how stacked the room was with Novick supporters, no good would likely have come from airing the dirty laundry there.

    Hopefully, members of the national PDA who are aware of this debacle will move decisively to protect the PDA's reputation. You can bet that if it goes unfixed that Gordon Smith will not hesitate to splash it all over the TV and radio with his massive war chest. It seems very likely that other Republicans in other states will be tempted to use this sad situation to discredit any PDA endorsement of their opponents too.

    No good can come from this situation.

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    Kevin, I doubt Gordon Smith gives a rip about any of this. However, as another poster noted up-thread, f our nominee does get this endorsement, you can make a fairly safe bet that Cindy Sheehan and Tom Hayden's name might get a "creepy music" name check in an ad or two, and be red meat fodder in the right-wing blogsphere and the chatter on the other side of the aisle. All for the "endorsement" of a chapter endorsement that for any practical purpose doesn't even exist yet.

    That however doesn't really address the issue of the poor judgment of the Novick campaign in addressing the ethical FUBAR with regards to their approach in all this. BTW, I guess this comment qualifies as the first negative "attack" against Novick.

  • LT (unverified)
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    Right on Paulie!

    Let's take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Is the goal to nominate the person most likely to defeat Gordon Smith in the fall, or is the goal to have a competition between Steve's supporters and Jeff's supporters?

    Can anyone please explain why it wouldn't be a better strategy to say "I support Steve because..."?

    Think about this statement: "Considering how stacked the room was with Novick supporters, no good would likely have come from airing the dirty laundry there."

    How many people attended that meeting? 50, 100, 200, 500? Compare that number to the number of registered Democrats, and add in the number of people who might register Dem if they were inspired to do so.

    Then consider this: would someone unaware of this controversy be more likely to vote in this primary if they heard from a friend "The other day I heard (Steve/Jeff) speak and was really impressed with what he said about..."? Or would they be more likely to vote if there was a discussion of the PDA endorsement?

    My roommate at the 1984 Democratic national convention came up the ranks from a union textile worker to a union organizer to eventually an officer in the Oregon AFL-CIO. She and her union friends were very down to earth people--carpenters, steelworkers, etc. Are those folks likely to support a candidate endorsed by a group whose board includes John Conyers, Tom Hayden, Maxine Waters even if Liz K had said upfront she wanted to start the Oregon PDA chapter and she worked for a US Senate candidate? Had she followed the rules scrupulously, would that PDA endorsement have gotten the votes of any hard working folks of the sort the 20th century Democratic Party represented?

    Today while I was waiting for help in a hardware store, I heard 4 guys discussing plumbing in general and one man's specific plumbing problem in a nearby house in particular. They eventually agreed to pool their expertise to see how much of the project could be done today.

    Folks, those hard working people with technical expertise were once the backbone of the Democratic Party. Is either US Senate candidate trying to gain their attention, or is this all about winning friends and endorsements in the younger generation new high tech economy because those ordinary hard working folks don't matter?

    Chris, I don't care if someone on the Merkley campaign is as vociferous as TJ is for Novick. How does that statement gain one new Democratic voter?

    The lead story on BO today is about the AFL-CIO. Which endorsement is more likely to win both the primary and the general US Senate election---the PDA endorsement or the AFL-CIO endorsement?

    This has been a very bitter fight about a very small matter. I'm not sure I would vote for the candidate endorsed by any group, much less the PDA. I'd like to hear the candidates in more detail on issues that matter to Oregonians, not to a national group. Rarely do organizational endorsements gain my vote--they mostly gain volunteers and maybe some money. How many Oregon Democrats would volunteer for the PDA endorsed candidate who are not already active?

    This is beginning to sound like that old Eugene Field poem "The Duel" poem which ends

    But the gingham dog and calico cat Wallowed this way and tumbled that, Employing every tooth and claw In the awfullest way you ever saw- And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew!

       (Don't fancy I exaggerate- 
       I got my news from the Chinese plate!)
    

    Next morning where the two had sat They found no trace of the dog or cat; And some folks think unto this day That burglars stole that pair away! But the truth about the cat and pup Is this: they ate each other up! Now what do you really think of that!

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    How many people attended that meeting? 50, 100, 200, 500?

    Roughly 50. About half or more of whom were Novick partisans. Indeed, Steve Novick was there working the crowd from the very start and he wandered from front to back greeting numerous attendees by name, which is how I'm able to estimate how many were Novick partisans.

    There were three known Merkley supporters, myself, Jon Issacs and Ben of Witigonen. Three individuals to our immediate right appeared to have come up with Candy Neville and were her supporters. The remainder were probably reasonably objective attendees without an apparent axe to grind.

    Compare that number to the number of registered Democrats, and add in the number of people who might register Dem if they were inspired to do so.

    That's precisely why this is important. Endorsements mean something, otherwise nobody would have shown up. The vastly larger population of potential Oregon voters rightly assess candidates in part because of the endorsements each candidate receives. And the endorsement of a populist group like the PDA could very well motivate Oregonians to register to vote and/or to join the Democratic party and get involved.

    Imagine how jaded towards any and all politicians that such inspired converts would likely become if this process had gone unchecked and we'd all just sat on our thumbs here instead of expressing outrage.

    Voter turnout in this country is already pathetic compared to our peers in Europe. Vast numbers of Americans don't even bother voting because they flat out don't trust any politicians. If you investigated the circumstances of their having become jaded, I'm positive that many (most?) would boil down to having felt conned by a politician or a political party/organization.

    Why shouldn't those of us who wish that MORE, not less, Americans would get involved in the political process by voting express our anger and frustration with members of our own perceived side trying to game the system? How would America, Oregon, our communities or our own families and friends be benefitted by that?

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    Where to start? I don't know Liz Kimmerly..never met the woman, so I'm not prepared to assume and presume her motives. At the very least, she has made a really big mistake that is not doing her boss any good. However,if what's been written here is true, and I have no reason to doubt it yet, I am definitely unimpressed with the lack of response (Jake's response on this thread does a disservice to his boss)and action from the Novick campaign, particularly when given the perfect opportunity at the PDA meeting. Being polite and hoping it will go away doesn't work. Just look at how many times we have had a heart attack over "who knew what when and what action did they take?" situations from the local all the way to national level, and then judging (rightly or wrongly) office-holders for their actions (or non actions). This whole thing could have been nipped in the bud, one way or another, and should have been.

    It is naive to think that no one outside of the political blogosphere is, or will be paying attention to this, and to how the Novick campaign responds. A few years ago, that might have been true, but not now. The volume of discussion on this single thread indicates that. Now other blogs are discussing it. How many people are the people on this thread talking to? How many people are just reading and not responding? Blogs don't exist in a bubble anymore. Soon, it will become a media news story. The story broke on a newspaper's blog to begin with. Anyone who thinks that Smith's campaign won't have a field day with this later gives too much credit to Smith.

    As far as Kari's objectivity, when did he ever claim to be objective? Every other sentence he writes has some kind of disclaimer on it (Yes Kari I know that's overstated, but you get my point). For some reason, no matter how many times he says it, someone always dogs him for not being a "real" reporter. Well, guess what? He's not a reporter. He's never claimed to be. Why does it continue to be a point of discussion?

    As near as I can tell, the Merkley supporters on this thread have gone out of their way to separate Novick's ethics and reputation from their questions about the campaign itself. Those questions need to be asked. It's been made quite clear from the start that if Novick wins the nomination, the Merkley supporters will dive head first into a Novick campaign in the general election. No matter who I vote for in the primary, for myself I want to know that whoever the Democratic nominee is in November isn't going to run and hide (intentionally or not)from what Smith is going to throw at them. Wanting them to have the ability to manage and be transparent in office is a given. My impression is that Merkley supporters want that, too. They are all but rooting for Novick to step up and handle this.

    We have a need to know that come November, our candidate's campaign (whether Merkley or Novick) is going to have the kind of strength and ability that their respective candidates have. Without that, it won't matter where they are on the issues, Smith's campaign will mop the floor with them. Both candidates have what it takes to win, but that won't matter if their campaigns don't.

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    LT, You wrote as if bdunn were not a vociferous attacker against Novick, which he is, and as if it were not obvious from numerour writings here that he is strong Merkley partisan, a title I would expect him to claim proudly. If it doesn't matter now it didn't matter when you brought it up.

    And once again you are now saying you want detailed positions from candidates, which is fine, except for all of the times you say details are too detailed for ordinary voters.

    It may not matter to you but it matters to me. I've been a Novick supporter though not as much as Kristin -- no volunteering, just a little money. But this bugs the heck out of me and if his campaign doesn't get its act together to give us some answers, let go Liz Kimmerly or tell us why they're not, and get Kimmerly to step down from her PDA role whatever else they do in order to help repair the damage she & now others including Novick have done to the organization, I won't be sending in my mites anymore.

    I'm not an insider like you, LT. I'm just an unusual ordinary guy who happens to get some of his news about Oregon from this blog. I don't make any claims about the importance of blogs and not much about the importance of my opinion. But as an ordinary guy I count as much as any of your other anecdotal ordinary people. My vote's just one vote. But it is a vote, I always vote.

    The Novick I'd like to see in the Senate would be a progressive force along the lines of Paul Wellstone. But if Novick is really a guy who's willing to wreck a progressive organizing effort in order to get a worthless advantage, that matters to me and it will affect my vote. As far as I am concerned the ball is in his court at this point.

    And the thing of it is, it is so stupid. If Kimmerly was making the play suggested, and had succeeded by virtue of violating the PDA rules, national PDA would have repudiated it within weeks at most with worse publicity cost to Novick's campaign. It is so stupid that the sheer stupidity of it has counted as a reason for thinking there must be some other explanation.

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    And the thing of it is, it is so stupid. If Kimmerly was making the play suggested, and had succeeded by virtue of violating the PDA rules, national PDA would have repudiated it within weeks at most with worse publicity cost to Novick's campaign. It is so stupid that the sheer stupidity of it has counted as a reason for thinking there must be some other explanation.

    (Sorry about the itals cl)

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    Ditto, Chris. If Liz Kimmerly is a political neophyte who just stumbled mightily along her otherwise well-meaning learning process, could someone cop to that? If it was part of some thought-out strategy, will someone at least let us know? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

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    Kristin,

    Liz Kimmerly says she's been a member of the PDA for quite some time, dating to sometime back to when she lived in California. She's also listed in a variety of places as a member (former?) of Code Pink. So I don't believe that a) she is a political neophyte or b) that Novick would have hired a political neophyte. That's not to say that she's some seasoned political operative. She may be, but I'm not aware of anything which would indicate that. But there is lots of room inbetween seasoned political operative and a political neophyte.

    Obviously if Liz has this long association with the PDA then she really ought to understand how the organization works, even if she were a political neophyte otherwise.

  • LT (unverified)
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    Maybe here is the problem,

    "Liz Kimmerly says she's been a member of the PDA for quite some time, dating to sometime back to when she lived in California. "

    This is not the first time someone stumbled in an Oregon campaign after having lived (and been politically active?) elsewhere. Many activists burned out over the last couple decades because political staffers brought in from out of state to be employees of a campaign said "Well, this worked (or "wasn't worth the bother") in my previous state" as if all states are alike. It is the responsibility of the person whose name is on the ballot to supervise staff. Those candidates who understand that (just like management in restaurants, stores, customer service of any kind)tend to prosper more than those who ignore that duty to supervise staff.

    THIS IS OREGON! In 1984, Barbara Roberts announced the Oregon delegation votes at the national convention by saying "Oregon, the land of clean air, clean water, and clean politics, casts...........".

    There are a couple of lessons there. First of all, that was a great line for a Sec. of State candidate to be using! Second, she was a Mondale supporter in a delegation controlled by Hart delegates, but she was the consensus choice to deliver that message and thus gain a moment of national publicity. Barbara wasn't the only statewide candidate at that convention, but she was the consensus choice. Why? Maybe because she was the person everyone liked! What a concept!

    One reason that Barbara was elected Sec. of State that year and Gov. in a later election was that she had something money can't buy and organizational endorsements never deliver: a number of people who knew her and would tell their friends "here is a strength of character story about my friend Barbara...".

    I agree with what Chris said,

    As far as I am concerned the ball is in his court at this point.

    And the thing of it is, it is so stupid

    There is an old saying that in Chinese the words crisis and opportunity are related. I had the chance to meet some visiting Chinese adults a year and a half ago, and asked one of them if that was true. Turns out there are 2 Chinese characters in some (or all?) Chinese words. The Chinese woman wrote out the words "crisis" and "opportunity" for me. Each word shares one Chinese character and each has one different Chinese character.

    The point is, Liz K. accidentally provided Steve both a crisis and an opportunity. A sad story from more campaigns than I care to remember is that sometimes the person running for office is not the person some of the supporters have known for years.
    One example: Ron Wyden won the primary for the special election to succeed Packwood. In the behind the scenes fight in Jan. 1996 which resulted in the 100% positive annoucement, people of the "no one has laid a finger on Gordon Smith, so we have to do it " school of thought fought with the that was taking a great risk, because people who have known Ron for years may say "I'd vote for the Ron I have known for a long time, but this guy running negative ads is not that guy I have known and admired for years!". We will never know if Ron might have won with the negative ads, but I'm glad he decided to go positive.

    Same thing with Steve. Those of us who have known him a long time would like to believe this: "Steve Novick himself would never condone these sorts of dirty tricks. He needs to figure out who on his campaign is responsible, and remove them from his operation."

    But Steve himself has to prove that he is still that guy. And if he can't talk/ act in ways to show he understands there are some people upset by this, he may wish he'd never used the Wizard of Oz analogy.

    A 19 year old friend of mine went with me to see Steve earlier this year, and he ended with his reminder that the man behind the curtain said at the end of the movie Wizard of Oz, "I'm a good man, just a bad wizard". Steve then said Gordon is a good man but a bad Senator. My friend later made a witty remark likening Steve to the Wizard himself.

    If Steve doesn't move to show he understands the problem Liz has caused him, some day he will be working a room where someone asks him if he approves what his online director did. An ordinary person has every right to ask that question, and blaming the DSCC or having Stephanie or TJ post a comment against such an action won't solve the situation.

    We are now getting to the meat of the campaign, where people outside the activists start paying attention. Can the candidates start talking about Obama's speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church (I HOPE they know where that is and the significance of Obama speaking there this weekend, and make sure all their staff members know as well!), what John Edwards said on Face the Nation today, what Chairman Charlie Rangel said about a stimulus package which doesn't forget ordinary folks who are financially struggling, or comment on the visit of Educ. Sec. Margaret Spellings to a classroom in one of Salem's older school buildings?

    If the candidates can't comment on those issues, all the endorsements in the world won't help defeat Gordon Smith!

  • Harry (unverified)
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    Posted by: Harry Wilson | Jan 19, 2008 11:47:26 AM "Unrelated clarification: The Harry posting earlier on this thread is not Harry Wilson. Harry Wilson is me, the guy that works for Kroger, enjoys midnight touch football, has a passion for Fresca and cupcakes, and who cannot do a handstand. I, Harry Wilson, plan to stay out of posting on debates about candidates in the Democratic primaries, but if I do post, I will always identify myself by including my last name."

    <hr/>

    Thanks for the clarification, Harry Wilson. And I am the Harry who refuses (even with Kari's many a prodding) to add his last name. I hate Fresca, and prefer scones to cupcakes.

    And for that one person who seemed interested, this Harry is a metro-expat-refugee now from the sunny-side east of the Cascades, rural part of the state. And as I have said before, I am a NAV, so most likely (unless I change to Demo just for the Primary) will be waiting until Nov to choose from the D, Smitty and the Indy-Frohnster.

    Kari writes (in his first comment to his post): "At 5:32, Harry asks if I called Novick for comment. I did not. On another story a few weeks ago, which I did not publish, I was told that the Novick campaign wouldn't provide comment to me when I write for BlueOregon - because of my role as a consultant to the Merkley campaign."

    <hr/>

    Ok, I can deal with your reality. But I (and a few others I know) have now decided that blogs are our first stop for "news", instead of BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, FoxNews,... Even with the blogs admitted 'bias' (versus the 'objective news' non-admitted bias), I still look to the 'open-source' news (ie blogs) for my unfiltered source of information. Having heard what Kari has said, and having myself said all my blather, I would still expect you to have called the Novick campaign for a response prior to your posting your post. But I understand if you feel my expectations are unrealistic, but they are still my expectations. I bet in 2 yrs, more people like me (NAVs and others) will have my type of expectations of journalistic type behavior, but you may not care nor it may not matter.

    And Kari clears things up very well: "And second, as I think I've said over and over now, I'm not "covering" it. I'm describing MY ROLE in what happened. I am an active participant here. I called the PDA. I told them what Kimmerly was up to. I blew the whistle. Me. Active participant. Not disinterested observer. Not journalist. Not "covering" it. Participating. Telling you what I'm up to. Got it?"

    <hr/>

    I got it, Kari, loud and clear. But me and Pat are not the only people who have higher expectations for you. Sorry, it's the medium... as the dead tree sources of info continue their death spiral, people will look to you types (blogs) to fill the void, and act the part. Even Charles Barkley claimed he wasn't a role model because he didn't wanna be one. Too bad, it didn't change things one iota.

    My thoughts from a NAV perspective:

    -I thought Kari could have (and should have) started things off a bit more objectively, without the obvious partisan angle he took for the benefit of his client. But I am not the one trying to feed his family, so who am I to kick the broom outta his hands?

    -Kari tee'ed this golf ball (pinata?) up very well, and the Merkley folks did a great job taking many effective whacks at the wonderful set up job they were given.

    -Novick and his staff missed a big opportunity to followup this Kari post with something official, ANYTHING official. As a NAV voter (who is not happy with Smitty, and is actively looking for something {ANYTHING} reasonable as an alternative), I was very much expecting an official counter-point from the Novick campaign. My wish was for Steve Novick himself to come in here and clear things up and show some action (and spunk) and maybe even throw a left hook. Something verbal in two dimension that his first TV ad did in 3D.

    As of this writing, Steve nor his campaign have met my expectations. I dunno, maybe my expectations are too high. Maybe I am just a NAV, who should look to his own kind for relief. The Frohnster is looking better and better, even if he is such a long shot in Nov.

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    Harry,

    You might be surprised at how many of us are fellow NAVs.

    My creds: The Independent Voter established 2000 (and largely ignored since 2005 when I got into blogs). I've been NAV long enough that I remember when my voter ID card listed me as an "independent" back in the early '90s. Also, the other primary writer at my blog, Becky, is another fellow NAV. And I'm currently negotiating with a member of the Oregon Independent Party as another writer at my blog. Mac is my sole Dem writer and his nonconformist streak is easily wide enough that he fits in perfectly with us NAVs.

    I personally know other NAVs who support Merkley. Likewise, several very visible Novick supporters in the lefty Oregon blogosphere are known NAVs.

    This Senate race is far from a Dems Only Club. I know that some of them don't like that fact but what are they gonna do about it? ;-)

  • Daniel Spiro (unverified)
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    Kari said:

    "I don't know how well you know Steve, but I've known him for nearly a decade - and have worked as allies on any number of campaigns. That's why I wrote this in the original post: 'Steve Novick himself would never condone these sorts of dirty tricks. He needs to figure out who on his campaign is responsible, and remove them from his operation.' I have yet to "condemn" Steve Novick personally on this, but he needs to clean house to get on the side of goodness here."

    OK, a few things. First, in 1981-2, Steve lived in Ames Hall Rm. 102 as a 1-L in law school and I lived in Ames 103. We've been extremely close friends ever since. The guy is as moral as it gets. And it was amazing to see a kid of 18 come across as one of the more intellectually sophisticated 1-Ls at Harvard. Just amazing.

    Second, I have devoted my professional career to bringing fraud cases on behalf of government agencies. So I have high standards for what it means to say "J'accuse," and I simply didn't care for the "case for the prosecution" that I read here. Frankly, I think it was inappropriate for a guy like you who is paid by a campaign to write headlines like "Fake endorsement backfires" without making a more coherent case than has been made here.

    Third, that said, I did notice that you stopped short of calling Novick untrustworthy -- unlike some of the Amen chorus who followed you -- and I do sincerely appreciate your reluctance to go there. I believe you that you like and respect Novick. In fact, I recall nights over the years when Steve has stayed at my house in Maryland and has been blogging on Blue Oregon, so I figured you guys had some sort of connection.

    Fourth, I don't know any member of Novick's staff personally, and therefore I will not vouch for them. I am simply criticizing the way you handled this, not defending them. It's possible that they are also at fault for what they did. And yes, it's possible Steve is at fault. Then again, for all I know, Merkley is a scumbag who put you up to a scummy accusation. My point is that I have no idea about any of this, and consequently, I'm going to give both campaigns the benefit of the doubt until I get the facts. Steve and I have exchanged phone calls in the past 24 hours but we haven't spoken, so I have no idea what his perspective on this is. I don't know if it's my place to share that perspective after I talk to him, but I will at least show you the respect, Kari, of finding out for myself what the truth is and to give Steve the benefit of my counsel.

  • LT (unverified)
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    A second to the NAV remarks from someone who could easily register NAV after the primary depending on whether the primaries yield the tone here or a more intelligent tone.

    A cautionary tale, folks, from a Washington Post guest opinion.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011802870_2.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

    NOT AGAIN Watch It, Democrats. You Could Still Slip Up.

    By Paul Starr Sunday, January 20, 2008; Page B01

    Keeping the election focused on the manifest failures of conservative Republican leadership is the only way the Democrats can grasp the opportunity at hand.

  • Daniel Spiro (unverified)
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    Kari said:

    "I don't know how well you know Steve, but I've known him for nearly a decade - and have worked as allies on any number of campaigns. That's why I wrote this in the original post: 'Steve Novick himself would never condone these sorts of dirty tricks. He needs to figure out who on his campaign is responsible, and remove them from his operation.' I have yet to "condemn" Steve Novick personally on this, but he needs to clean house to get on the side of goodness here."

    OK, a few things. First, in 1981-2, Steve lived in Ames Hall Rm. 102 as a 1-L in law school and I lived in Ames 103. We've been extremely close friends ever since. The guy is as moral as it gets. And it was amazing to see a kid of 18 come across as one of the more intellectually sophisticated 1-Ls at Harvard. Just amazing.

    Second, I have devoted my professional career to bringing fraud cases on behalf of government agencies. So I have high standards for what it means to say "J'accuse," and I simply didn't care for the "case for the prosecution" that I read here. Frankly, I think it was inappropriate for a guy like you who is paid by a campaign to write headlines like "Fake endorsement backfires" without making a more coherent case than has been made here.

    Third, that said, I did notice that you stopped short of calling Novick untrustworthy -- unlike some of the Amen chorus who followed you -- and I do sincerely appreciate your reluctance to go there. I believe you that you like and respect Novick. In fact, I recall nights over the years when Steve has stayed at my house in Maryland and has been blogging on Blue Oregon, so I figured you guys had some sort of connection.

    Fourth, I don't know any member of Novick's staff personally, and therefore I will not vouch for them. I am simply criticizing the way you handled this, not defending them. It's possible that they are also at fault for what they did. And yes, it's possible Steve is at fault. Then again, for all I know, Merkley is a scumbag who put you up to a scummy accusation. My point is that I have no idea about any of this, and consequently, I'm going to give both campaigns the benefit of the doubt until I get the facts. Steve and I have exchanged phone calls in the past 24 hours but we haven't spoken, so I have no idea what his perspective on this is. I don't know if it's my place to share that perspective after I talk to him, but I will at least show you the respect, Kari, of finding out for myself what the truth is and to give Steve the benefit of my counsel.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Hi, I'm sorry I was away from my computer all day, because I would have liked to have chimed in earlier to thank Dainel, petrichor and others for helping tone down some of the rancor that had been popping up. I think we would all feel a lot better about this campaign if we could remember not to take it too personally, and to keep our emotions in check. I'm not claiming to be a saint on this front, either.

  • LT (unverified)
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    Daniel, I understand your point. But would you rather that someone not working on either of the campaigns had done a guest opinion here linking to Dave Steves just calling it "Steves writes a column on Novick"? Or that this blog ignore the story because Kari is a Merkley consultant?

    I've had close friends attacked politically, so I understand your frustration.

    I've also worked in sales (without customers, neither the product nor the candidate will convince people to "buy" the product or vote for the candidate) and volunteered enough politically to say this sounds fishy and the person on the ballot is ultimately responsible for the actions of supporters. Steve was an employee of the Bruggere campaign so he is not responsible for the stupid things that campaign and its supporters did. But he should be aware of how that campaign made people distrustful of any staffers or candidates they don't know personally.

    Sorry, but even the Steves version of this story puts up red flags of the "this reminds me of when..." variety. I'd suggest you contact your old friend Steve and say "Liz K, your online director, has caused you a problem and you need to address it".

  • LT (unverified)
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    James X, you are right. Obama said in his Ebenezer Baptist speech today that "If Martin Luther King could forgive his jailers, surely we can work together" or something like that.

    After all his criticism of the Sen. from Illinois, Bill Clinton said in a Tom Brokaw interview that MLK would have been very proud if he had lived to see the Obama candidacy.

    Eyes on the prize, folks! Is the goal to have a US Senator who is a Democrat, or is the goal to "beat" the opposing primary candidate? Time to ponder that question.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Daniel Spiro | Jan 20, 2008 8:19:58 PM

    Daniel,

    I was at the PDA meeting last night, live and in person. I even shook Steve's hand before the meeting began.

    He didn't once let on that the same Liz Kimmerly who was clearly running the meeting and who announced herself as the state coordinator of this upstart chapter also happens to be a paid member of his campaign staff. Not even when he went up and gave his pre-endorsement speech.

    Similarly, Liz didn't let on that one of the candidates seeking her group's endorsement happens to sign her paychecks. She didn't even give her last name when bluntly asked by an old man in the audience who she was.

    Now, I'm not a lawyer and don't profess to know how you legal beagles parse things like fraud and conflicts of interest. Heck, I only have a high school diploma. But I do know that by every measure of ethics which makes a whiff of sense to me, both Liz and Steve ought to have at the very least fully disclosed their political relationship up front and in no uncertain terms at the very first opportunity. We were all there for a minimum of two hours and during that entire span of time neither of them disclosed their relationship.

    Mind you, I'm not even getting into how this alleged chapter of the PDA came into existance and the ethics thereof. Kari wasn't there last night so there's no reason to even bring him into that.

    Pretend that you don't know any of the individuals involved. Let's say that candidate X was there and senior paid staffer Y was running the meeting and talking about the endorsement process for the chapter for which candidate X was there to ostensibly vie for. Would you see any red flags? Would you wonder if perhaps it was a rigged... dare I say, fraudulent, game in which candidates Z and W likely have no realistic chance at winning the endorsement because of senior paid staffer Y's leadership role?

  • (Show?)
    Is the goal to have a US Senator who is a Democrat, or is the goal to "beat" the opposing primary candidate? Time to ponder that question.

    Context, LT.

    Most of us have profound problems with Gordon Smith's ethics. Are ethical standards only a thing to bludgeon Republicans with? If so, wouldn't that make us all nothing more than a bunch of flaming hypocrites?

  • (Show?)
    He didn't once let on that the same Liz Kimmerly who was clearly running the meeting and who announced herself as the state coordinator of this upstart chapter also happens to be a paid member of his campaign staff. Not even when he went up and gave his pre-endorsement speech.

    And? Can you be specific about the conflict of interest at play here? What impact did "running the meeting" (except for the vast majority that you say Ross ran) have on either the endorsement process or any pending vote? What potential impact is it you ascribe?

    If all you have is "it looks bad," please note that.

  • (Show?)
    -Novick and his staff missed a big opportunity to followup this Kari post with something official, ANYTHING official. As a NAV voter (who is not happy with Smitty, and is actively looking for something {ANYTHING} reasonable as an alternative), I was very much expecting an official counter-point from the Novick campaign.

    First, this was dumped late on a Friday before a holiday. Secondly, I think responding to the Merkley consultant's allegations before a broader establishment of the facts may be unwarranted. If you have concerns that's certainly legitimate, but holding the campaign to such a tight response window, on something that is blowing up on the Merkley blogs and almost nowhere else, may be overexpectant.

    I think the first order is to find out the national's official position, one that comes directly from them rather than via telephone. One might not expect them to be able to respond until Tuesday at least, given MLK Day. Or maybe they'll say something tomorrow, or not at all I suppose. But 48 hours of ranting on Blue O and the echo chamber seems not to be pressuring them, in any case.

  • Jack Murray (unverified)
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    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 20, 2008 9:40:44 PM

    By organizing the chapter and determining the nature and process of the embryonic chapter's endorsement, Kimmerly has unduly influenced the outcome of the endorsement decision. Even though she may not have chaired the last meeting's endorsement agenda item, in her capacity as PDA state coordinator Kimmerly organized the endorsement process herself. The conflict of interest still exists if Kimmerly, the online director for the Novick campaign, is the head of an organization that will endorse a candidate from those in a field that includes her employer. They are competing interests, and they create at the very least the appearance of the inability to act impartially.

    In politics, that appearance is everything. The mere appearance of impropriety undermines confidence in the legitimacy of PDA and its endorsement process, not to mention the ethical standards of the Novick campaign. Steve Novick did nothing at last night's meeting to disclose that conflict of interest, which exists with or without any proven wrongdoing.

    There may well be actual wrongdoing in this situation. As many have indicated, it appears that Kimmerly violated PDA bylaws by calling an endorsement meeting without 5 days' notice to each campaign or sufficient notice to all PDA members in the area. We need to hear from the Novick campaign, or investigate more thoroughly, to see if anything else occurred.

    But for a conflict of interest to happen, all that you need is the appearance of partiality. Ethically, failing to disclose a conflict of interest is bad enough. Continuing to act in these competing capacities without disclosing said conflict is much worse.

    I suggest you read this Wikipedia article to better understand what a conflict of interest is.

  • (Show?)
    Can you be specific about the conflict of interest at play here?

    With respect, if you have to ask that then no possible explanation could enlighten you. None are so blind as those who refuse to see.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 20, 2008 9:40:44 PM And? Can you be specific about the conflict of interest at play here? What impact did "running the meeting" (except for the vast majority that you say Ross ran) have on either the endorsement process or any pending vote? What potential impact is it you ascribe?

    Are you serious TJ? You can't plainly see the conflict of interest?

    Let's move past the clear rule violation about the PDA's endorsement process, and move to this question that can be asked right out of the gate?

    How does anyone know that Liz didn't beat the invitation email list from the PDA against the list of Novick supporters the Novick campaign has, and only invite to this meeting only PDA members predisposed to "endorsing" Novick?

    Liz's intentions might be 100% legitimate, but because of the inherent conflict of interest, the entire credibility of the PDAs endorsement in the Oregon Senate race is suspect (at best).

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 20, 2008 9:50:14 PM

    They had time to attend an aborted endorsement meeting run by a member of their staff but can't be bothered to answer questions asked by their own supporters?

    Really?

  • (Show?)
    By organizing the chapter and determining the nature and process of the embryonic chapter's endorsement, Kimmerly has unduly influenced the outcome of the endorsement decision.

    In what specific way, please?

    By the way, the email I received about the meeting is like Jenni's--and my disappointment in not being able to make it centered around not being able to see Scott Ritter, who is one of the few heroes of the pre-war period. You'd think that since I can't vote for Novick at the polls, I'd be more bummed about not getting to actually cast SOME kind of vote for him, if I thought that was on the agenda. I was also told the "actual endorsement meeting" would be "later in the month"--ie, NOT at the meeting yesterday. That was written on Jan 10. Kari's allegations are based at least in part on what he believes was due to happen on Jan 19; his beliefs may or may not be correct.

  • (Show?)

    "With respect, if you have to ask that then no possible explanation could enlighten you. None are so blind as those who refuse to see."

    Clever. Why not indulge me, lest your response lead some to think you can't actually come up with something.

  • (Show?)

    "They had time to attend an aborted endorsement meeting run by a member of their staff but can't be bothered to answer questions asked by their own supporters?

    Really??"

    Like I said, perhaps responding to allegations from the Merkley campaign and its minion before receiving a formal indication of misconduct from the PDA doesn't seem prudent.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 20, 2008 10:12:44 PM and my disappointment in not being able to make it centered around not being able to see Scott Ritter, who is one of the few heroes of the pre-war period

    And did Scott Ritter even attend this meeting? Was that part of the meetings "agenda" even mentioned or addressed at the meeting?

  • (Show?)

    "And did Scott Ritter even attend this meeting? Was that part of the meetings "agenda" even mentioned or addressed at the meeting?"

    I don't know, as I said I couldn't make it. But yes, that's what I'm telling you--it was the major item on the meeting agenda.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 20, 2008 10:14:51 PM "With respect, if you have to ask that then no possible explanation could enlighten you. None are so blind as those who refuse to see." Clever. Why not indulge me, lest your response lead some to think you can't actually come up with something.

    It wasn't a clever response. It was the truth.

    I'm not interested in playing games with you, TJ.

  • (Show?)

    "I'm not interested in playing games with you, TJ."

    And yet here you are. Should be easy, right? How did opening and closing the meeting impact the endorsement process, much less any vote?

  • Jack Murray (unverified)
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    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 20, 2008 10:12:44 PM In what specific way, please?

    The Facts:

    a) Liz Kimmerly is the Novick campaign online director b) Liz Kimmerly, in a separate role as PDA state coordinator for Oregon, set up the PDA-Oregon chapter which launched early this week and

    c) Proceeded to move the endorsement process within 48 hours of forming the group for this Saturday (giving the campaigns involved only 4 days' notice) and

    d) Failed to contact or notify many, if not most, of the 2300 members of the national PDA here in Oregon, which

    e) Violated the rules of the national PDA endorsement process with require at least three weeks' notice to members and a written questionnaire to the candidates. There was no post on PDA-Oregon's website of the meeting. What's more, each voter in that endorsement meeting must have been in good standing with the local chapter for at least 10 days. The chapter hadn't even existed for 10 days by Jan 19.

    e.5) If not for the publicity given to this endorsement process, the endorsement would have taken place on Jan 19.

    f) Kimmerly should have known about these processes due to her 'long involvement' with the PDA, and would have followed them if her intentions were purely fair.

    H) Liz Kimmerly did not disclose her affiliation with the Novick campaign to the other members of PDA, or the other candidates for endorsement, before the Jan 19 meeting

    I) The Jan 19 PDA meeting went into a discussion of endorsements, but stopped just short of endorsing a candidate

    J) Liz Kimmerly did not conduct the endorsement discussion, but,

    K) She chaired the rest of the meeting without disclosing her affiliation to the Novick campaign or her last name.

    L) Steve Novick also attended that meeting as a candidate for an endorsement

    M) Candy Neville, another candidate for the endorsement, and Jon Isaacs, spokesman for candidate Jeff Merkley, also attended and had the opportunity to speak

    N) Novick had an opportunity to speak, and during that speech or anytime else during the meeting, he failed to disclose his professional relationship to Liz Kimmerly (his online director--see A)

    O) This meeting occurred after substantial blog coverage (including RG reporter David Steves) that raised questions about the legitimacy of the PDA-Portland chapter's provenance.

    The main point here is that she did not follow the rules that are intended to let candidates know and sufficiently prepare for the endorsement meeting. And because she's a longstanding member of PDA, it seems she did so knowingly.

  • (Show?)

    "The main point here is that she did not follow the rules that are intended to let candidates know and sufficiently prepare for the endorsement meeting."

    And who is your source on that? What is your source on what was expected to happen at "the endorsement meeting," and which parts of the PDA process are relevant to those specific actions?

  • (Show?)

    And to follow up, you've restated what you believe are facts on the issue. What you did NOT do, is explain what impact chairing the meeting had on the endorsement process or vote.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 20, 2008 10:40:24 PM And who is your source on that?

    Tim Carpenter - the executive director of the PDA. Read the article we are commenting on here.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Oh, I forgot, what's "Web Wonks 4 Novick?" It seems a mystery to Google.

  • (Show?)

    "Tim Carpenter - the executive director of the PDA. Read the article we are commenting on here."

    Oh great, when did you speak to him? Or read the statement he made on behalf of his organization? That would really clear things up. See, right now all we have is what the Merkley consultant says he said.

  • (Show?)

    TJ, I explained a right-out-of-the-gate and one of the more obvious reason this is a clear conflict of interest at 10:12:44 PM.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 20, 2008 10:52:22 PM

    If you are calling Kari a liar, please don't beat around the bush about it. Your attempts to try and inject uncertainty about the veracity of the clear conflict of interest with your antics are rather sad Mark.

  • (Show?)

    "TJ, I explained a right-out-of-the-gate and one of the more obvious reason this is a clear conflict of interest at 10:12:44 PM."

    ? That's my comment. ?

  • (Show?)

    It is also worth noting how TJ is attempting to throw enough mud to try and drag this into a dismissible he said/she said argument which people (hoping the media no doubt) dismiss and tune out of.

  • (Show?)

    "If you are calling Kari a liar, please don't beat around the bush about it. Your attempts to try and inject uncertainty about the veracity of the clear conflict of interest with your antics are rather sad Mark."

    If I were, it would only be in kind response to him calling Stephanie a liar based on her account of a conversation, with more witnesses than his. But I'm not. I'm saying that perhaps Kari is not a particularly trustworthy source to give an objective account, and that any apparent improprieties would appear to involve PDA functions--and as such, I think it would be wise to let PDA speak for itself rather than through a rival campaign. I'm not calling him a liar; I'm questioning the wisdom of treating his account as fact.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Also, you can debate whether it's relevant, but Wikipedia has an entry on recusal. I don't understand why Kimmerly wouldn't just acknowledge her bias to the group, recuse herself, and let Ross or someone take over for her at that meeting. That just seems like such an easy and obvious step to have taken, especially when her involvement had clearly become a controversy.

  • (Show?)

    "It is also worth noting how TJ is attempting to throw enough mud"

    You're the one throwing the mud, pal. I'm consistently suggesting we wait for the man with the hose.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 20, 2008 10:57:57 PM That's my comment.

    Wrong. It is a link to my comment answering your question.

  • (Show?)

    TJ, your childish attempts at bating people and trying to throw mud, basically calling Kari a liar, etc. speaks for itself.

  • (Show?)
    It is also worth noting how TJ is attempting to throw enough mud to try and drag this into a dismissible he said/she said argument which people (hoping the media no doubt) dismiss and tune out of.

    Yes, that much is crystal clear. Too many openly pro-Novick individuals have expressed concern about Liz's ethics in this thread for torridjoe's tactics to be taken seriously. He's not just insulting our intelligence, he's insulting the intelligence of his fellow Novick supporters as well as that of the nonaligned individuals who have also expressed concerns in this thread.

  • (Show?)

    "Wrong. It is a link to my comment answering your question."

    Mislabeled, then, because the timestamp is mine. The link takes me to a discussion about what you perceive to be a general conflict of interest. My question was what the impact of Kimmerly's involvement LAST NIGHT AT THE MEETING was on the endorsement process, that necessitated disclosure. What happened that required it? I'm curious as to why you'd try to answer, since you weren't there.

  • Still Waiting (unverified)
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    Kari's banner says "fake endorsement". Still waiting to be shown an endorsement, so we can decide if it is fake or not.

  • (Show?)

    "TJ, your childish attempts at bating people and trying to throw mud, basically calling Kari a liar, etc. speaks for itself."

    So not only do you take what the Merkley campaign has to say about the incident at face value, even asking for that information to be verified is out of bounds?

    If the verified facts are on your side, then insulting people and accusing them falsely seems like a bad gambit for you. What you're doing here--attempting to squelch any inquiry into the full story--is the hallmark of those not confident of their position. Furthermore, it simply provides a dodge for having to answer to the questions being raise.

  • (Show?)

    "Kari's banner says "fake endorsement". Still waiting to be shown an endorsement, so we can decide if it is fake or not."

    Don't forget "sham organization," which appears to contradict even his own account of the conversation with PDA. If we accept the "48 hours ago" response, that begs the question of why they'd validate a sham application. Nowhere is it alleged that the chapter was formed improperly...and of course the MSM account notes that PDA INITIALLY APPROACHED KIMMERLY, not the other way around.

  • (Show?)

    I doubt that anyone believes that with well over 230 comments in this thread that a) anyone is trying to squelch inquiry in any way or b) that torridjoe is seriously interested in understanding how or why what Liz did is ethically questionable. The answers are there for those who honestly want to understand. Those who don't want to understand or who don't like what they understood from the very beginning can be expected to kick and scream and do everything in their power to distract attention from the issue here. Which is exactly what we're witnessing here.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 20, 2008 11:11:34 PM

    Irrelevant TJ. As I already pointed out, right out of the gate the attendees at the meeting could easily been stacked because of Liz gaming who got invited out of PDA email list. She may not have, but because of the inherent conflict of interest, it is but one of myriad ways her conflict of interest delegitimizes the process of a PDA endorsement.

    As for the "still waiting's" attempt to make out that since no endorsement has yet occurred there is no problem here is also irrelevant. From what is known at this point, the endorsement could well have taken place on the 19th, violating the DPA endorsement process because it was conceived of, initiated by the Liz, and gamed (a paid staffer) for the sole reason to get a local chapter endorsement, which is a prerequisite to getting a national PDA endorsement, and their email list and potential donor/volunteer base.

    This is why the clear conflict of interest is a real issue. It also raises questions about judgment and ethical compass of the Novick campaign that this didn't raise red-flags as to the clear ethical problems that their own paid campaign staffer was organizing a group to give an endorsement in a race that her boss was in.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Still Waiting: The post makes clear that Kari believes a fake endorsement was averted.

    Also, who are you, and are you the same person who has posted as "To paraphrase," "All the piffle that's fit to print," and "Navel Gazers, Unite?"

    Which reminds me, the people who keep telling us that this subject isn't worth commenting on, or that the commenters here are irrelevant, are not only directly insulting themselves, but wasting our time. Some forums kick people out for that -- who needs a self-appointed forum insulter?

  • (Show?)

    "Irrelevant TJ."

    To you, maybe. You continue to respond to a question you were not asked. Murray said her lack of disclosure at last night's meeting presents a conflict of interest for the events of last night's meeting.

    Explain how, Jack.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: torridjoe | Jan 20, 2008 9:40:44 PM Can you be specific about the conflict of interest at play here?

    To lie by omission is to remain silent and thereby withhold from someone else a vital piece (or pieces) of information. The silence is deceptive in that it gives a false impression to the person from whom the information was withheld. It subverts the truth; it is a way to manipulate someone into altering their behavior to suit the desire of the person who intentionally withheld the vital information; and, most importantly, it's a gross violation of another person's right of self-determination. - The Art of Lying

  • (Show?)

    What next? Talking out of turn demerits?

    TJ's attempts to shut down the discussion on his demands and his terms. Sorry it doesn't work that way Mark.

  • (Show?)

    That is why Liz Kimmerly's lack of full disclosure represents a conflict of interest on her part.

  • (Show?)

    More...

    A lie of omission is the most insidious, most pervasive, and most common lie on the entire planet. Commonly, those who use this type of lie, have conned themselves into believing that to intentionally remain silent when ethical behavior calls for one to speak up is not a lie at all. In spite of overwhelming evidence that their silence deceives, misleads, and often causes untold grief and misery, they refuse to speak the truth. - The Art of Lying
  • (Show?)

    More yet...

    The Inevitable Consequences: There is also the common misconception that intentional deception by silence has no consequences. Lies of commission (telling a lie) and lies of omission (withholding the truth) are both acts of intention deception. Both reap the same consequences. What liars by omission do not understand is that one cannot escape the laws of the universe.' - The Art of Lying
  • James X. (unverified)
    (Show?)

    TJ: It wasn't her lack of disclosure that's a conflict of interest. It's that, well, she's a member of a campaign. Her interests are both to one particular campaign, and to an organization that's endorsing a campaign. That's a conflict. A good way to resolve it is to recuse oneself. The Wikipedia article I linked to mainly deals with federal judicial recusals, but the basic ideas seem applicable:

    a federal judge "shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned."
    a judge is disqualified "where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party"
  • (Show?)

    Oh, this is a great one too...

    A lie is not in the words, or lack of words; it's in the intention of the deceiver. - The Art of Lying
  • (Show?)

    Liz Kimmerly's willful failure to disclose her affiliation with the Novick campaign was a textbook lie by omission. As the site I linked to says, "it's a gross violation of another person's right of self-determination." And THAT is why it was a blatent conflict of interest for both Liz and for Steve Novick. Both of them participated fully in the lie by omission.

    Since when do self-respecting progressives willfully violate another person's right of self-determination?

  • (Show?)

    TJ... Even if Liz recused herself from the moderating function (which, let's be honest, is just "OK, you're up next..."), she didn't recuse herself from the most important decisions:

    • Liz Kimmerly apparently decided alone that the Oregon chapter should seek to endorse in the US Senate race - despite the national's endorsement guidelines: "PDA National only endorses Democratic candidates for federal office, with our focus on the House of Representatives, and makes no endorsements in local or state races." (That "focus" doesn't preclude a Senate endorsement, merely that having an endorsement at all isn't a foregone conclusion. Someone had to decide to do it.)

    • She picked the date and location for the meeting.

    • She provided the notice for the candidates. With only four days notice, it was highly likely that the other candidates would have a schedule conflict.

    • She sent the notices to the members about the meeting. As others have noted above, there's no way to verify that she sent the notices to all 2300 members -- and we have several folks here saying that they're members and never received that particular email (despite getting all other PDA emails.)

    • And finally, given the PDA's loose rules for membership (just give us a name and an email), she has the opportunity to seed the PDA membership list with Novick supporters -- an opportunity not available to other campaigns. (Whether she did that or not is unknown, but it's worth noting that the Novick campaign did turnout calls to people that had never even heard of the PDA.)

    For all those reasons, Kimmerly shouldn't be anywhere near a leadership role in a newly-formed organization whose sole or primary purpose, it seems to her, to be issuing an endorsement for the campaign she works on.

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Um, Kevin, did you just discover this site or something?

  • James X. (unverified)
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    I should clarify, not BlueOregon, but the one you're citing over and over.

  • Waiting (unverified)
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    No, I'm not Paraphrase, etc.

    When was Kimmerly appointed to a judgeship? I missed that.

  • Daniel Spiro (unverified)
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    Kari said:

    "I don't know how well you know Steve, but I've known him for nearly a decade - and have worked as allies on any number of campaigns. That's why I wrote this in the original post: 'Steve Novick himself would never condone these sorts of dirty tricks. He needs to figure out who on his campaign is responsible, and remove them from his operation.' I have yet to "condemn" Steve Novick personally on this, but he needs to clean house to get on the side of goodness here."

    OK, a few things. First, in 1981-2, Steve lived in Ames Hall Rm. 102 as a 1-L in law school and I lived in Ames 103. We've been extremely close friends ever since. The guy is as moral as it gets. And it was amazing to see a kid of 18 come across as one of the more intellectually sophisticated 1-Ls at Harvard. Just amazing.

    Second, I have devoted my professional career to bringing fraud cases on behalf of government agencies. So I have high standards for what it means to say "J'accuse," and I simply didn't care for the "case for the prosecution" that I read here. Frankly, I think it was inappropriate for a guy like you who is paid by a campaign to write headlines like "Fake endorsement backfires" without making a more coherent case than has been made here.

    Third, that said, I did notice that you stopped short of calling Novick untrustworthy -- unlike some of the Amen chorus who followed you -- and I do sincerely appreciate your reluctance to go there. I believe you that you like and respect Novick. In fact, I recall nights over the years when Steve has stayed at my house in Maryland and has been blogging on Blue Oregon, so I figured you guys had some sort of connection.

    Fourth, I don't know any member of Novick's staff personally, and therefore I will not vouch for them. I am simply criticizing the way you handled this, not defending them. It's possible that they are also at fault for what they did. And yes, it's possible Steve is at fault. Then again, for all I know, Merkley is a scumbag who put you up to a scummy accusation. My point is that I have no idea about any of this, and consequently, I'm going to give both campaigns the benefit of the doubt until I get the facts. Steve and I have exchanged phone calls in the past 24 hours but we haven't spoken, so I have no idea what his perspective on this is. I don't know if it's my place to share that perspective after I talk to him, but I will at least show you the respect, Kari, of finding out for myself what the truth is and to give Steve the benefit of my counsel.

  • James X. (unverified)
    (Show?)

    To state the obvious, ethics aren't limited to the legal arena, Waiting.

  • (Show?)

    Posted by: petrichor | Jan 21, 2008 1:12:18 AM

    This mess is entirely of Novick's campaigns making, and Kari's association with the Merkley campaign in no way diminishes the conflict of interest inherent in the issues Liz Kimmerly's actions, with seeming tacit approval and participation by the Novick campaign. The attempts to make this about Kari is subterfuge (at best). Even if Kari were the highest paid partisan operative for the Merkley campaign possible, it in no way would alter the facts that Liz Kimmerly is a paid staffer for the Novick campaign, she has an inherent conflict of interest to be an organizer of local chapter of a national organization (PDA) whose endorsement her boss is seeking. It would not change the fact that she is the gatekeeper of organizing said local chapter, she called for and arranged for the initial meeting for the purposes of endorsement, she violated the rules of the endorsement process of the organization, she made no disclosure at this organizing meeting that she was a part of the campaign of one of the candidates to the group she was organizing for the purposes of endorsing a candidate in that race, has yet to clarify the myriad questions and issues her actions have about the ethical lines she has crossed, and the only public statements made by the Novick campaign is a single post by Jake Wiegler, which contained numerous inaccurate assertions which raised more questions than it answered... but somehow this is all the problem because Kari posts on a blog his company runs and which he started?

    Your numerous posts in this thread are the Chewbacca defense done poorly.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Daniel Spiro | Jan 21, 2008 1:25:12 AM ... Third, that said, I did notice that you stopped short of calling Novick untrustworthy -- unlike some of the Amen chorus who followed you -- and I do sincerely appreciate your reluctance to go there.

    Actually almost everyone here, including more than a few supporting Novick and those unaligned with either campaign, have expressed the hope that Steve step-forward and reassure people who respect him personally that his campaign can be trusted, by addressing the problems in his campaign's actions in all this.

    I also find it quite odd that you have issues with the way Kari "handled this" as if this ethical mess of Novick's staffers and the campaign engaging in actions with clear conflict of interest problems is, in anyway Kari's or the Merkely campign's responsibility or doing.

    Smacks of more Chewbacca defense.

  • (Show?)

    Ugh..

    ...has yet to clarify the myriad questions and issues her actions have about the ethical lines she has crossed...

    Should read:

    ...has yet to clarify the myriad questions and issues her actions have raised about the ethical lines she has crossed...
  • (Show?)
    Posted by: lestatdelc | Jan 21, 2008 11:08:25 AM

    Shooting the messenger seems to be the new tact favored by the hardcore Novick partisans.

    The question that progressive Oregonians ought to be asking themselves is this:

    If Isaac Newton had been rhetorically "shot" would that mean that gravity somehow would cease to exist?

  • (Show?)

    For the record, I just sent the following email to Jake Weigler, the campaign manager for Novick for Senate:

    Jake -- It should go without saying, but maybe it doesn't, so I'll say it. At BlueOregon, we'd welcome a guest column from Steve or Liz that explains what the hell this PDA endorsement thing is all about. As I'm sure you know, lots of our readers (including some active Novick supporters) have lots of questions that are going unanswered so far. You can feel free to send it to Charlie, who will post directly - without my review. Thanks. -kari.

    "Charlie" is Charlie Burr - one of our three BlueOregon editors, who is an active Novick supporter.

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    Thanks, Kari!(from one of those active Novick supporters)

  • LT (unverified)
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    Elsewhere, TJ refers to the "Merkley Troll Unit". Yeah, right, saying everyone who doesn't support Steve's campaign is a Merkley supporter. That ought to help Steve win the primary! NOT!

    Leaving aside the question of whether anyone who wasn't following this primary campaign in 2007 would be inspired to support Novick because there is a group called Web Wonks 4 Novick, I think there is a bigger point being ignored.

    Suppose for a moment there is no scandal at all, that all good progressive Democrats should just say Liz K made no mistakes, she had every right to do what she did with PDA, and their endorsement is so important no one should bother about the bylaws, short notice, etc.

    In what way does that live up to what Steve says on the front page of his website about today's holiday?

    Steve says, "Dr. King devoted and ultimately gave his life to justice, through advocacy for civil rights, peace and economic fairness. In his day, he railed against an unjust war and demanded that everyone get a fair share of prosperity. We must always remember the great contributions he made in those struggles, and recognize that we still face those challenges today here at home.

    What are the Web Wonks for Novick, or Steve himself, or Liz or Jake or anyone else on that camapign doing specifically to promote justice, peace, civil rights and economic fairness? How does an endorsement from a national group (even if the local chapter had been established years ago) actually promote any of those things?

    Tonight I got an email from the Edwards campaign. Maybe is time to ponder this quote. How would a national endorsement help uninsured kids in Oregon? Isn't it inside baseball to worry about endorsements?

    This is the Edwards quote:

    Like Dr. King, John believes passionately that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." That is why he will continue to speak out, without fear or favor, on the issue of economic justice in America.

    During tonight's presidential debate, you could see John doing exactly what Martin Luther King, III urged him to do: framing the issues of health care and the economy as a struggle for justice.

    And as the other two candidates bickered over who's right and who's wrong, it was John who cut through the fracas and asked, "This kind of squabbling, how many kids is this going to get health care? We have to understand this is not about us personally."

  • john (unverified)
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    Oregonian Seems to me that 90% of the comments here have been generated by 10 people?

    D. Spiro, The truly accomplished Rovian operator only tees up the ball and lets others take the swing. No coincidence that Rove's aide ended up in jail and not him.

    Looking forward to a real campaign and not a lot of mudslinging.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: James X. | Jan 20, 2008 10:51:04 PM Oh, I forgot, what's "Web Wonks 4 Novick?" It seems a mystery to Google.

    Web Wonks 4 Novick

  • James X. (unverified)
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    Lestatdelc:

    You cannot view the group's content or participate in the group because you are not currently a member. Members must be approved before joining. You must be a member of this group to read its archive.
  • LT (unverified)
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    It looks like Web Wonks 4 Novick is a Google group much like the Yahoo group I belong to. In that group of local Democrats, one must be personally invited with an invitation email. Members are locals from 2 neighboring counties who mainly know each other offline. It sends out an email with recent posts, which vary from calendar items to debates on issues and links to local or national stories. It is informational, where people argue politics.

    Are Web Wonks activists? Doing what?

  • James X. (unverified)
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    I'm pretty sure most people have stopped reading this comment thread and have gone on to the other one on this issue.

  • turkey hotel (unverified)
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  • turkey hotel (unverified)
    (Show?)

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  • Robert G. Gourley (unverified)
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    Liz Kimmerly broke the explicit endorsement rules of the Progressive Democrats of America.

    The closest I saw to any kind of citing of these rules was this post:

    Posted by: Kari Chisholm | Jan 21, 2008 12:09:39 AM

    which is a far cry from citing a rule prohibiting what's alleged to have been done, and certainly no evidence of wrong doing.

    Where's the beef? Or is this just a bunch of bellyaching, like a bunch of Republicans.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: LT | Jan 22, 2008 1:01:09 AM It looks like Web Wonks 4 Novick is a Google group much like the Yahoo group I belong to. In that group of local Democrats, one must be personally invited with an invitation email. Members are locals from 2 neighboring counties who mainly know each other offline. It sends out an email with recent posts, which vary from calendar items to debates on issues and links to local or national stories. It is informational, where people argue politics. Are Web Wonks activists? Doing what?

    It is a Google group where (and through which) selected bloggers supporting Novick huddle, with active participation by Jake Weigler and Liz Kimmerly, to discuss, coordinate and cross-promote their efforts and postings, as well as pass around anything they get on Jeff Merkley like email blasts, announcements, etc.

  • (Show?)
    Posted by: Stephanie V | Jan 22, 2008 5:28:49 PM How ... sinister!
    <h2>Never said it was, but it kinda stretches the credulity to pretend that when you and TJ go negative (which you have since last August), that the Novick campaign isn't in the loop.</h2>

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