Welcome to your Monday open thread. Are you ready for another Monday? I know I’m not. (Insert standard complaints about weekends being too short). What’s on your mind?
Ian Murphy, the Buffalo Beast columnist who pranked Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as fake David Koch is running for Congress.
You may remember Ian Murphy as the journalist who called Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker posing as right-wing mega-donor David Koch.
It turns out that Murphy, who is editor of the Buffalo Beast, lives in the New York district formerly represented by Chris Lee, the Republican who recently resigned after it emerged he was posing as a lobbyist and cruising Craigslist for mistresses.
Murphy is now running as a Green in the special election scheduled for May 24. In an homage to Lee, Murphy’s campaign slogan is “Laid back dude seeks votes, maybe more.”
His platform is a mix of standard Green stuff — tax billionaires, slash military spending — and more idiosyncratic material:
I am pro-Craigslist transsexuals. Unlike your last Congressman, however, I am not a terrible hypocrite. And unlike my Republican opponent, I am not a discriminating jerk.
The Republican nominee for the special election, Jane Corwin is expected to win. The Democrats’ nominee is Kathy Hoschul. Corwin has a couple of Tea Party challengers (getting on as a 3rd party is relatively easy in NY) in Jack Davis and also Medal of Honor winner David Bellavia.
This is a weird story. It’s one of those what could they be thinking? stories. Joe Biden’s staff escorted a pool reporter to a closet to wait for the VP’s appearance. Why?
“Scott – You have our sincere apologies for the lack of a better hold room today,” wrote Vice President Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander last Wednesday to Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers.
“Lack of a better hold room” is an interesting way of putting it. In order to keep Powers from mingling with guests at a Democratic fundraiser last Wednesday, Powers was escorted into a storage closet by a Biden staffer.
Powers was the designated pool reporter, there to record the proceedings for the press corps in general.
He told ABC News that he showed up at 11:15 a.m. Wednesday to cover Vice President Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., attending a $500-a-head fundraiser at the Winter Park manse of developer Alan Ginsburg.
A young female staffer met him at the door and brought him to the storage closet.
Yes, they owe the reporter an apology. An hour in a closet? That’s just really weird. Whose idea was this?