Bush-campaign saboteur gets an unlikely olive branch.

Press Herald ^ | December 19, 2003 | Bill Nemitz

[UCAL]

Bush-campaign saboteur gets an unlikely olive branch

Say what you will about George W. Bush. The man knows how to forgive and forget.

Three years after Tom Connolly dropped a fax of the president's old drunken-driving conviction into the hands of local news media - and in the process all but torched a presidential campaign just days before a historic national election - the Portland lawyer finally heard back this week from the man Connolly once referred to on his Web site as "Weinerboy."

It came in the mail on Wednesday. It's a computer-autographed, color picture of the president and first lady Laura Bush, both smiling warmly from outside their ranch in Crawford, Texas

Below the picture, it says, "To: Thomas J. Connolly, Thank you for your early commitment and dedication as a Charter Member of the Campaign in Maine. Grassroots leaders like you are the key to building a winning team. Best wishes, Laura Bush, George Bush."

"He needs me!" exulted Connolly, holding up the greeting in his Fore Street office as if it were a first-class ticket to redemption. "He can't win without me!"

To appreciate just what a triumph this is for Connolly, we need to look back over what's happened since Nov. 2, 2000, when he passed a television reporter a tip about Bush's 1976 OUI in Kennebunkport.

In short, it hasn't been pretty.

First came the death threats from Bush zealots convinced that Connolly, Maine's 1998 Democratic candidate for governor and a delegate to the 2000 Democratic National Convention, was the hit man tapped by the Al Gore campaign to blindside Bush with a last-minute smear as Election Day neared. To this day, Connolly insists he acted at no one else's behest.....

[UCAL]

Might be time to send this guy some more subscriptions.

[RetiredArmy]

How bout one to the gay guys of the demo party.

[danneskjold]

Sounds like Tom Connolly and Joe Wilson could be related...at least in self-important kind of way...

[speedy]

I think it might be in order to wipe the smile off of this clown's face. Or maybe the "arse" who wrote this favorable piece on him. We do have his e-mail address, after all.

[Solson]

Hillarious article. this guy got it good...and deserved every bit of it.

[UCAL]

I still get angry when I think about this jerk. It's a typical democrat tactic to wait until just before the election to unload some dirt. I think he should pay for it some more.

If he had done it to Clinton the IRS would have been all over him.

[Miss Marple]

This guy is a grade A jerk. So is the reporter.

I recommend gifts to the reporter for bringing us such a lovely holiday story.

[UCAL]

"this guy got it good"

Still, there's probably magazines that he hasn't had a chance to preview yet....

[Texagirl4W]

But he wouldn't have lived long enough to pay anything to them.

[speedy]

Absolutely. This was the most blatant of cheap shots and the media could not restrain its breathess excitement. So very Dem. As if a guy this active in the party wasn't working in cahoots with national strategists on an issue like this. What a liar. I think it's time his lawn was fertilized with a little more garbage. Like old Gore campaign posters

[Solson]

This reporter did us a favor. The guy gets more grief whenever he's in the news...now he's in the news.

[BenLurkin]

The drunk driving smear was timed to a "T".

The drunk driving smear was to ONLY reason eh 200 election wasn't a big win for the Republicans.

[BenLurkin]

eh 200 = the 2000.

Hey, it passed spell check!

[speedy]

Yep, the scribe could probably use a few extra publications in his mailbox for his professional enhancement. Treating it like it's something cute instead of the classless act it was. They used to scream about Donald Segretti for doing so-called "Dirty Tricks" for Nixon that never sank to this level.

[UCAL]

Makes you wonder who these voters are that can change their minds based on such news. I guess Bush should have gotten this out once he had the primary wrapped up.

Still, if you were planning to vote for Bush and didn't because of a decades old OUI arrest, it comes off as very fickle.

[RichInOC]

Tom...George Bush is the president of the United States, and has an extremely good shot (knock knock knock) at being president for the next five years. You are still a lawyer in Portland.

Merry Christmas, Weinerboy.

[UCAL]

Chris Lehane: Al Gore's press secretary, " self nicknamed 'The Master of Disaster" for his role in digging up dirt on Clinton accusers and congressional committee members investigating the White Water land deal is from, you guessed it, Kennebunkport, Maine.

Lehane is sort of a local celebrity in Maine political circles for his role defending the White House from various scandals while working for the Clintons in Washington, D.C. Before the White House, Mr. Lehane built quite a political career in Maine working for Democrat campaigns.

Erin Lehane: She is Chris Lehane's sister. She lives in Kennebunkport, Maine. It just so happens that Al Gore's press secretary's sister works for a law firm with state Democratic chairman and ex-Gov. Kenneth Curtis, who, along with Tom Connolly, was a Gore delegate to the Democratic convention in Los Angeles.

Judge William Childs: Said to have pulled Bush's DUI record four months ago. In some reports, Tom Connolly received the information from this Judge. The question is: In the last four months has William Childes had any contact with the Gore Campaign?

Todd Webster: A native of Yarmouth, Maine, serves as deputy communications director on the Gore campaign.

Pat Eltman: A resident of South Portland, Maine. Mr. Eltman, among other things, helped orchestrate the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles for the Gore campaign.

Emmett Beliveau: Of Hallowell, Maine, works on the Gore advance team.

There are the facts.

All of those people are Democratic activists or Gore staffers from Maine. The only coincidence or surprise here, would be that one of them didn't supply the Bush info to Tom Connolly to release 5 days before the election

[Az Joe]

No. I believe it hit the Wed night before the election, not enough time for most people to read about it and digest it's meaning.

It was timed and designed to smear. It drove undecideds to Gore, when the usual pattern was for undecideds to break for the challenger against the "incumbent".

IMHO

[ThreeYearLurker]

I thought that Childs was Mark Fabiani (The other Master of Disaster) college roommate.

[ER_in_OC,CA]

I disagree that he "deserves" what he's received. Why is it funny when someone's property is destroyed? Is theft funny? (subscriptions, mail order products, etc. -- SOMEONE pays for that fraud -- sending items via UPS is not free).

If you were in possession of evidence of a similar situation about a dem nominee, would you want exposing something truthful to receive such treatment? Ridiculous.

Anyone thinking of destroying this man's property or credit is a scoundrel who deserves to be prosecuted.

[hosepipe]

Is'nt Washington state down stream from Vancovers drain fields ?...

That must be it.. It must be something.. Theres something terribly wrong with those people in Washington.. Actually the whole left coast is effected..

WHAT ARE THOSR PEOPLE IN VANCOVER EATING that produces so much effluent...

[ER_in_OC,CA]

The other surprise is that the otherwise brilliant Karl Rove didn't work on a way to diffuse this problem before it was exposed.

Other than the folks in ME you mention, I can think of at least one person in the Bush campaign that surely knew of it. (Bush, of course)

They took a calculated risk by hiding it away and the gamble *almost* didn't pay off.

I guarantee you that if I have information on a dem candidate's past -- I will absolutely expose it if it is truthful -- and I'll time the release of that information so it is most harmful to the democrat's chances for election.

[futureceo31]

I really think that Rove and Bush's media team did not think this would be a big deal. Who amoung us including evangical christians had not gone to the bottle in their youth. But I tend to believe that it did hurt Bush. But what hurt Bush more are all the dead people voting, polls closing early in Florida that lost him probably 10,000 votes plus 100% plus voter turnrout amoung blacks that went overwhelmingly for Gore, felons voting, throwing out the militray vote, razor thin margins that went for the Dims in several states and so on. In spite of all of this, we managed to pull through. We have to be very very vigilant in 2004. Look at what happened in LA where Jindal was leading in the polls and the last week of negative advertising that his opponent promised WOULD NOT run affected the final race. This would happen in close elections but surprisinly in Califorina, the 2 repbs pulled off 60% of the total vote. That is probably one of the best campaign stories of 2003 but nary a dim or media that reports this.

[Cboldt]

Ugh. Connoly must be a contributor to the GOP.

To those who are suggesting pranks (subscribing Connoly or the reporter to magazines, etc.), my suggestions are to "grow up," and to not engage in illegal revenge.

[alnick]

I disagree that he "deserves" what he's received. Why is it funny when someone's property is destroyed? Is theft funny? (subscriptions, mail order products, etc. -- SOMEONE pays for that fraud -- sending items via UPS is not free).

I agree with you for the most part, but you gotta admit the styrofoam peanuts on the front lawn was funny.

[paul in cape]

......

[okie01]

They [the Bush campaign] took a calculated risk by hiding it away and the gamble *almost* didn't pay off.

Bush was evidently the only person in the campaign who was aware of the infraction.

He was literally ashamed of the affair. So much so that he hadn't "innoculated" himself by making it public knowledge because he had never told his daughters of the event and didn't want them to find out.

Indeed, as the governor of Texas, he was asked by MADD to be their spokesman in a commercial. Bush advised MADD of the Maine DUI before accepting the job, so they could back out if they wanted. They chose to go ahead with the project.

So far as I know, the officers of MADD were the only people outside the Bush family (and the Maine authorities) who knew about the infraction.

[Terry Mross]

This guy plays "dirty tricks" but gets p.o.'d when he's on the receiving end of "dirty tricks". funny

[xm177e2]

Gee... all this means is that Bush isn't keeping some sort of paranoid "enemies list" (or if he has such a list, he's not letting on by scratching those names of his Christmas card list)

[ER_in_OC,CA]

Yes, I am completely FOR annoying the "bad guys" in any/all legal means possible. The foam peanuts is funny, though legally and ethically dubious.

More interesting is the way Freepers who picket / protest march do their business in a fully legal and fully witty way. The "get out of Cheney's house" chants to algore were good material and "good" heckling. True 'victory' was had when the media reported that the gorefamily could hear the protestors and were bothered by them.

Back as a UCLA student, I was a mighty good heckler of basketball opponents. I'm all for heckling.

[ER_in_OC,CA]

Thanks for the addl. info.

It seems politics has shifted so that "indiscretions" are pre-leaked to limit damage. For example, the Schwarzenegger "we partied and were very crazy on movie sets" stuff; and the Dem candidates virtually all admitting their pot use.

[LibKill]

The DUmmies are ranting and raving about this. I won't post a link because Mr. Robinson does not want posts or links from Democratic Underground.

It is pretty funny, they have their panties in a knot.

[UCAL]

"The DUmmies are ranting and raving about this."

I don't know what the big deal is. I've been getting membership applications from the AARP since I was 22. Maybe I should hold a news conference.

Thank God that the Democrats have their data bases and mailing lists so honed that no Republican ever has something addresse to him / her!

On the other hand, it makes MY White House Christmas Card seem a little less special.

[sport]

History shows us that people that embarassed clinton had relatively short life spans.

If dean or clark offer hillary the VP slot if they win the nomination, how would you like to be the insurance company that wrote their life policy?

[Az Joe]

The DUmmys at DUmmyland are twisting in the wind.

HEY RUMGUY!! Come on mo fo. I will kick your ass!

glasschains@zensearch.com

[Viking2002]

Heeheehahahaa....I was just thinking the same thing. :-)