Sun: Cardin Fires Campaign Staffer for Anti-Semitic, Racially Charged Blogging Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

From the Baltimore Sun, September 16, 2005, regarding comments from a Cardin campaign staffer on her unidentified (and unlinked) blog:

Some of the comments about Steele on the blog, titled "Road Diaries of the Persuasionatrix," were written in an Aug. 27 posting.

"It's an unfortunate situation when you're running an established, older, white candidate against a dynamic, younger African-American," the staffer wrote. "It's unfortunate, because the racism card hovers constantly, just waiting to be dealt."

In a posting written on Aug. 25, the blog refers to a stack of Oreo cookies "looming in the back of one of the campaign pantries" and how staffers have to "surreptitiously glance around" before eating them.

"The subterfuge would be unnecessary, and snack time would be far less amusing, had an angry citizen not thrown the aforementioned delicious snack food at one of our opponents to comment on his lack of racial loyalty," the blog continues.

...

The blog also contains an Aug. 17 entry in which she asks "Why am I a Sex Object for Old, Jewish Men?" In it, she wrote that while she likes the candidate she is working for, "I do not, however, like some of my candidate's friends.

...

"They are large men with strong, loud voices and Jewish noses," she wrote. "They are also overly friendly."

Note the dates - this crap stayed up for three weeks. Granted, these were three weeks when the campaign had more things to do than to monitor the personal blogs of their staffers, but this is embarrassing. Worse politically perhaps than the raucous sexual escapades that got Jessica Cutler fired from her staff position with an Congressman. BTW the website in question, The Persuasionatrix, has been taken down.

UPDATE: Upon reflection and the well-founded comment of Soccer Dad below, I still think this is quite embarrassing to Cardin and damaging undoubtedly to the unnamed staffer's career in Maryland politics, but a reasonably prudent campaign should not be spending time and money researching the blogging that their staff might be doing on the side, unless brought specifically to their attention. There is no evidence of negligence or unprofessionalism by Cardin or his staff except by the blogger herself.

SECOND UPDATE: Lee Fang at Free State Politics:

I have a bad feeling the Steele campaign will seize upon this snot nosed staffer's comments on her blog to try to indict the racially and socially inclusive Cardin as some sort of person who would use this type of oreo slur. Anyone who makes these oreo comparisons has something seriously wrong with them. I condemn any College Democrat, any student, anyone who would use such terminology, references, whatever.

However Steele would be as despicable as the ex-Cardin staffer if he were to exploit this incident to incite racial tension within our great state. If Steele is to show any leadership at all in this campaign, he should do what he can to limit any kind of political fire storm over this. Any GOP members, pundits, or anyone who would try to exploit this should be condemned by Steele. Remember that.

Some of the controversy around the "Oreo" business has to do with doubts about Steele's account of the publicized Oreo-throwing incident at a Morgan State debate in 2002, some doubting that the event occurred at all. Neither Democrats nor Republicans should be going back to that matter now. There is too much of substance - Iraq, economic policy, federal spending and the deficit, federal involvement in local social issues, Social Security, health care - as well as meaningful discussions of legislative style and philosophical approach between these two men to waste time on that inside baseball garbage.

I want a Senator who is economically moderate - i.e. fiscally tight in a balanced-budget sense but willing to support infrastructure maintenance and improvement - and socially liberal. My kind of candidate is not running this year. Let the debate redirect itself promptly to issues of substance and strategy. It is likely that either candidate as Senator would be higher profile than Paul Sarbanes; neither is a charismatic media-hog a la Doug Gansler but the sheer novelty of a new Senator after 15,000 years and the fact that neither of these men is quite as taciturn as Paul "Omerta" Sarbanes will lead to a somewhat higher media profile for at least the Senator's first term.