Sunday’s editorial page had another piece from Williams, this one not just carrying water for the Insurance Commissioner, but inexplicably injects her current round of excuses into the debate without a single comment from Matt Denn. The appalling thing is that Williams is using the editorial page to try to alter the mood of the current debate and concerns swirling around the ICs office (and concerns that are a year old) — rather than get his reporters to actually try to do some , you know, reporting on this thing. And in the process, stoops to the despicable two-facedness of the WSJ editorial page.
Williams lets Stewart — via his editorial page — make the accusation that Matt Denn didn’t leave any of the records from his tenure at the office. Now if this were true, this would be serious news — and a story you’d think the NJ would want to report. But there is no reporting — just a recitation of Stewart’s litany of excuses.
But let’s think about files and records for a minute. Stewart tells Williams that only Denn’s records are missing, all of the others from previous ICs are intact. There is alot about this that makes no sense whatsoever — as in if Denn’s records were this crucial, the office would have come close to a dead stop long ago. But it didn’t — they certainly had enough information to be able to terminate the contract of the previous Captive Insurance leadership (they wouldn’t have known when his tenure was up otherwise, right?); they could find enough information on a lease that Denn signed to be able to come back to try to defect that bit of business back to him. In short — it doesn’t hold up. And are you wondering why she decided to make a big deal of this NOW — rather than a year or so ago? When the need for these records would have been URGENT? Yep, me too. But right now, Stewart is in some real hot water and apparently doesn’t have the character to honestly address her issues — she spins up a story for Ron Williams that he reprints hook, line and sinker. Even the part about taking the records as an act of revenge for primarying Denn — a primary that he won pretty handily (58-42) — Williams just repeats even though this may be where you see the real flop sweat by Stewart. Of course it is entirely possible that Stewart’s story is correct — unlikely though once you start thinking through the handwaving being done by Stewart.
The hearings being held by Byron Short are set for April 13 in Dover starting at one. Given the inept spin and blame that Williams so helpfully previewed, this ought to be a meeting for the recordbooks.