Thursday’s political round-up

May 3, 2007

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* Tonight will be the first Republican presidential debate, with 10 candidates taking the stage to field questions from Chris Matthews. The event will be held at (where else?) the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Nancy Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger will reportedly be on hand. The debate starts at 8pm (eastern) and will aired on MSNBC.

* Barack Obama found himself in a bit of an online mess when his campaign took control of the MySpace page listed under his name, which had been run by an Obama supporter unaffiliated with the campaign. Obama’s staffers had reached out to the supporter, who in turn asked for $39,000 for the work he’d put into the site, plus some additional fees up to $10,000. The campaign balked and worked with MySpace to claim the site anyway, in the process losing over 150,000 “friends” the site had collected. The creator of the site, Joe Anthony, received a call from Obama personally last night, but nevertheless has soured on the senator’s campaign.

* With Republican presidential hopefuls poised to share a stage for the first time this evening, the DNC is releasing a research packet on the top three candidates titled, “The Real Republicans.” The document, obtained by Politico, says Giuliani, Romney and McCain are “[o]ut of step with the mainstream of their party, out of step with the American people and even out of step with their own previous positions and public records.”

* Most of the Dem presidential candidates have been reluctant to criticize one another, but yesterday Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) took a modest shot at John Edwards for his new ads on Iraq funding: “We wish that Senator Edwards was still in the Senate for this important fight…. If we can’t get his vote in the Senate, of course we would welcome Senator Edwards ‘ support for Senator Dodd’s plan, which would safely re-deploy out troops and bring an end to this war within on year rather than the incremental eighteen-month approach he has proposed.”

* In Kentucky’s Republican gubernatorial primary, former Rep. Anne Northup (R) has launched an unbelievably hard-hitting ad against incumbent Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R), literally showing attack ads from Democrats that Northup’s campaign made up. Fletcher’s still leading in the polls, though.

Watching ten Republicans dance around the rotting corpse of Bush’s presidency (without stepping in it) ought to be entertaining.

  • Racerx,

    Speaking of corpses and discredited ideology, tonight’s “debate” will be filled with praise for that great American myth–Ronald Reagan. Bush? They’ll ignore him for a love fest of Reagan and days gone by.

  • Obama did the right thing in asserting control over his name and image on MySpace. The creator may have been well-intentioned but who can know for sure these days? And the fact that the creator wanted mega-bucks for it makes it feel more like cyber-squatting than true fandom.

    If the guy really wants to support Obama let him become a volunteer coordinator in his local area, not try to score some big bucks over a lousy website.

  • Big bucks?
    $39,000 for getting 160,000 people pumped about your campaign?

    HOW MUCH did Obama raise?
    Obama could have set up his own MySpace if the old site wasn’t worth having.

    This is exceptionally tacky.

    MySpace and Obama get raspberries for the utter disregard for the value of labor (Unions, are you paying attention?) and intellectual property.

    I used to be supporting Richardson, Obama and Gravel.
    Unless I hear that Obama has compensated this gentleman for his labor or returned the stolen goods, he has surrendered 33% of my support.

    Opponents of “eminent domain”, take note.

  • I, too, am a little surprised that the Obama/MySpace thing didn’t work out better. Was there room for compromise? Would the original creator have accepted a smaller $ amount? or an autographed copy of Audacity of Hope? or a role of “Obama 2008 MySpace Outreach Director” position? Or something else? something just doesn’t seem right here. why would Obama want to take such a heavy handed approach? Why would Joe Anthony make such demands and not be willing to discuss other options?

    I feel like we only know 15% of the story here. If only there were real transparency in these matters…

  • Doesn’t Myspace have rules about claiming to be someone your not? Sounds like this guy was just a digital squatter looking to make a quick buck of someone else’s name. Nice try, but the less scams like this work out, the better.

    It’s like filing patents for products you never intend to make just to sue someone when they do make it.

    • Comments are closed.