Busted!
Jeff Alworth
This is a day old, but worth checking out. Over at the Communique, B!x posted some thoughts on a new radio hit piece the Francesconi camp is running against Tom Potter. It's a great blog as is (B!x has Potter's response--"I'm very disappointed in him"), but the plot thickens in the comment thread.
Two comments appeared that were critical of Potter--one from "notyouraverageblogger" and one from "back to work" ("In short, what exactly qualifies Tom Potter to be mayor? ...from what I can tell, he does seem to be predominately running on his 20 months of experience as police chief 8 years ago.") Someone immediately smelled a rat--predictable, given that the "blogger" pseud was linked only to a hotmail address--not a blog. Then b!X went to work:
It's not proof-positive, but for the sake of conversation: Those comments, posted within 10 minutes of each other, were posted from the same IP address. At the very least, the two commenters share an Internet Service Provider....The IP address in question belongs to the network of Garvey Schubert Barer, a law firm with offices in Portland (amongst other locations).
He's no longer listed among their staff, but a Google cache reveals that one Bryan Francesconi at some point was a Summer Associate at that firm.
Also for whatever it's worth, this semi-mystery commenter weighed in on the thread in which both Jim and Bryan Francesconi posted comments.
Later, someone called the law firm and confirmed that Bryan Francesconi does indeed still work there.
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9:50 p.m.
Aug 12, '04
For what it's worth, I've already started to run into people offline who have presented some serious eyerolls in response to these bizarre little pseudonymous maneuvers.
Aug 12, '04
Funny, I forgot to put it in but earlier this evening, when I was writing, I meant to comment to Randy Leonard that he should tell Potter and Foxworth to dabble around on this blog, and see what happens ....
<h1></h1>Aug 13, '04
I do some volunteering for Tom, and I can tell you that the Potter campaign thinks the whole thing is pretty funny.