{"id":6779,"date":"2006-03-06T10:40:57","date_gmt":"2006-03-06T15:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6779"},"modified":"2006-03-06T10:40:57","modified_gmt":"2006-03-06T15:40:57","slug":"katherine-harris-starts-hiding-from-the-public-and-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/katherine-harris-starts-hiding-from-the-public-and-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Katherine Harris starts hiding from the public and press"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s still early in the campaign season, but it&#8217;s probably safe to say that Rep. Katharine Harris, the Republican candidate for Senate in Florida, is in real trouble.<\/p>\n<p>From a political perspective, this isn&#8217;t necessarily new. Harris ignored pleas from party leaders who urged her not to run, and whispered to reporters that they would prefer a different candidate take on Sen. Bill Nelson (D). Since then, Harris&#8217; fundraising has been weak and her staff has been repeatedly shaken up by a series of resignations among her top advisors. What&#8217;s more, polls don&#8217;t show her competing very well statewide.<\/p>\n<p>But that was <i>before<\/i> Harris got caught up in the Wade\/MZM controversy. Over the weekend, Harris acknowledged that she <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/03\/03\/AR2006030301836.html?nav=rss_print\/asection\">requested $10 million in federal funds<\/a> be set aside for a Navy intelligence program in her district at the request of Washington contractor Mitchell Wade, best known for his role in bribing disgraced lawmaker Duke Cunningham. What&#8217;s more, Wade recently admitted to prosecutors that he made illegal campaign contributions to Harris. Complicating matters further, Harris <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heraldtribune.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=2006603010423\">apparently lied<\/a> about her connections to Wade.<\/p>\n<p>How serious is the situation now? Well, Harris has decided to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tampatrib.com\/MGB10T5WEKE.html\">start hiding<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Already trying to avoid the media, U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Longboat Key, is canceling campaign stops in Southwest Florida as questions swirl about her ties to a Washington defense contractor at the center of a bribery scandal.<\/p>\n<p>Harris, who is running for the U.S. Senate, abruptly canceled a stop in Charlotte County on Saturday, and four other events planned for Lee and Collier counties were removed from her campaign Web site.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s another sign that Harris&#8217; struggling campaign is in full crisis mode.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As a rule, Senate candidates who find it necessary to hide from reporters and the public don&#8217;t do very well on Election Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s still early in the campaign season, but it&#8217;s probably safe to say that Rep. Katharine Harris, the Republican candidate for Senate in Florida, is in real trouble. From a political perspective, this isn&#8217;t necessarily new. Harris ignored pleas from party leaders who urged her not to run, and whispered to reporters that they would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}