Two things strike me about this response.
1) It is so matter of fact and straight forward that Bill Lee has to be feeling pretty stupid right about now. The hallmark of GOP smears are that they are idiotic, this response call Lee’s smear out for all it’s stupidity.
2) It got to me befor the actual stupid-ass GOP smear did which is the hallmark of a very well run election campaign.
I will not block quote Markell’s words so Bill Lee can read it without his spectacles.
“If the Republicans want to talk about my record at Nextel, let’s talk about my record – I am very proud of the thousands of jobs created, the tens of thousands of families we connected and the new technology platform we developed. That’s the kind of experience our next governor needs to take our economy in a new direction.
When a judge looked at this lawsuit, he threw it out of court. When the Republicans looked at it, they threw mud. They can’t even get their facts straight.
I have enjoyed laying out my proposals to create thousands of jobs, establish world-class schools and provide quality, affordable health care to all Delawareans. And Until now, this campaign has been a contest of ideas.
But, Bill Lee and the Republican Party have decided to unleash a personal attack virtually unparalleled in Delaware’s political history.
It’s clear why: Bill Lee is losing on the issues and the in polls. I believe that Delaware deserves better. Bill Lee and the Republicans, however, apparently believe only in winning at all cost.
His desperate campaign has therefore combined old and well-known public information about a failed lawsuit against me with innuendo and falsehood to try to smear my personal integrity. But all these insinuations reveal is that one major difference between me and my opponent is that I have had successful careers in both the public and private sectors.
As most Delawareans know, I joined a company called Fleet Call, Inc., in 1989 as its 13th employee, responsible for corporate development. That company later became Nextel – a name I coined. During my tenure with the company, I negotiated hundreds of acquisitions and led the company’s financing activities. Most of those deals were successful – so much so that during my 6½ years with Nextel, we grew from a company with virtually no revenues or employees to one with a market valuation of several billion dollars and 3,000 employees.
As happens when you do hundreds of transactions, not every one was completed. In early 1995, MCI tried to purchase a stake in Nextel, but the deal never closed. As also frequently happens when that occurs, a civil suit was filed against Nextel and several of its executives by disappointed shareholders hoping to make more money, and their lawyers. I was included in that lawsuit because of my corporate position, but despite that I was mentioned in the Complaint a total of twice – for making public statements that were verifiably true. The judge in the case dismissed the charge against me upon his first review of the suit but gave the plaintiffs a chance to amend the suit if they could produce any real evidence against me; they never did and that was the end of my involvement in the suit. Other, unrelated charges against the company continued for a half-dozen years and, so, in 2000, five years after I left Nextel, the company settled the lawsuit without acknowledging any wrongdoing, as companies frequently do to avoid the cost of further litigation.
In sum, I had at most a peripheral role in this lawsuit, never had to pay any money, never was the subject of any evidence of wrongdoing, and never was found to have done anything wrong. Sometimes when you are senior enough in a company you get sued – it is just a fact of business life.
Instead, in a desperate attempt to turn the campaign away from the battlefield of ideas, where they are losing, the Republicans have decided to make it personal – and to do so with innuendos of wrong-doing where the evidence, and court proceedings, have shown that in fact there was none. This is the lowest a campaign can sink. It is not the kind of campaign that Delaware deserves.”
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What a dork Bill Lee is turning out to be.