Republicans' 2008 Strategy: Pretend to be Democrats!

by Robert in Monterey [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Note: I will be on The Morning Show with Hal on Monterey's progressive radio station, KRXA 540 AM, at 8 AM tomorrow to discuss this and other local political issues.

Whether it's Republicans switching parties or simply trying to sound like Democrats one trend is becoming clear in the 2008 election - the Republican brand is a sure loser, so many of them are trying to pass themselves off as Democrats.

Here on the Central Coast we've been dealing with this for some time. Abel Maldonado's decision to run for the Democratic write-in nomination - which the Monterey Herald said "fails the straight face test" - is but the latest in a long, long list of dishonest campaign tactics employed by local Republicans who are so embarrassed of their party affiliation they try to hide it from the public.

Matt in Monterey told you of a campaign mailer that conservative Republican Ila Mettee-McCutchon sent to voters that included a picture form 1995 of her shaking hands with Bill Clinton and the caption "Monterey County Democratic Leaders Endorse Ila Mettee-McCutchon" - even though Clinton had made no such endorsement, despite the fact that the Monterey County Democrats had endorsed Jane Parker and the Monterey County Republicans had endorsed Ila.

As the Monterey County Democrats have discovered,  this is part of an ongoing strategy concocted by local Republican political director Brian Gesicki - who is, surprise surprise, also Abel Maldonado's campaign manager. In addition to the Ila ads, which he created, in 2006 he had College Republicans hold up signs saying "Democrats for Calcagno" (a Monterey County Supervisor who was a registered Republican) and sent ads that included pictures of John Kerry and John Edwards (neither of whom had endorsed Calcagno).

Also that year a Sacramento court ruled against his effort to list Abel Maldonado as a "business controller/auditor" for his Controller primary race despite the fact that Maldonado was neither.  And in 2004, Monterey County Republican co-chair Paul Bruno posed as a Green Party official and paid the filing fees for a Green Party candidate to try and draw votes away from Maldonado's Democratic challenger that year, Peg Pinard. The Green in question, Brooke Madsen, dropped out of the race after learning the truth and said he felt "used" by Republicans.

In a press release, Monterey County Democratic chair Vinz Koller said this was a "self-defeating" pattern of dishonesty:

Not only are such tactics wrong, they are ultimately self-defeating. In the information age, voters know too much - and they know they don't have to put up with this kind of junk any more.

Regardless of what happens with Gesicki and the Central Coast Republican strategy of pretending to be something they're not, we can expect these tactics to be employed across the state and across the country in the service of Republicans who know voters aren't in a mood to reelect them.