Poliquin Condemns Attack Ad on Les Otten

youtube

The ad is not particurlarly well done.

The Poliquin statement is stupid, unless he hopes to bring more attention to the ad.

The fact that Poliquin sent out the statement tells me he is either (a) Machiavellian or (b) not ready for prime-time. Either way, the statement does not speak well of Bruce. Why comment on something that you have nothing to do with? Trying to bring attention to it?

He is also all wet about laws being broken. Unless the ad was done by a campaign or PAC or more than $100 was spent, no laws were broken. People still have First Amendment rights and can comment on candidates through youtube. I guess Bruce is against free speech.

Dan -

The YouTube ad has been pulled.

skf

Interesting. Is there a way to find out why? Did youtube pull it or the creator?

The ad being pulled, combined with the Poliquin statement and his consultant with a questionable track record make me wonder.

Here is the ad.

Pine Tree Politics analysis of the situation.

The ad was taken down and re-posted by Matt Gagnon.

He speculates that the Otten campaign complained and got the ad taken down. If that is true that makes two GOP candidates who have little respect for the First Amendment.

This is dumbfounding. I don't quite know what to say.
Why on earth would Mr. Poliquin react to what seems to be a random internet pot-shot? Will he also react to every negative online comment about his opponents?
Something from Shakespeare comes to mind, something about protesting too much.

Interestingly, one of Mr.Poliquin's DC operatives, Garrett Murch, covered this same American Skiing subject in a guest post on the same Pine Tree Politics-
http://www.pinetreepolitics.com/2010/01/21/warning-to-maine-republicans-...

For Mr. Poliquin to act appalled by the content of the video is disingenuous, in my opinion. He's already openly criticized Mr. Otten for his failed business venture through a surrogate in a blog post, I'm confused why he would act so incredulous over the same statements put rather inartfully to music.

The comment about breaking campaign finance laws is troubling. Either (a) Bruce is ignorant of the law or (b) he is making a suggestion that one of the other campaigns is behind the ad, which would be a campaign finance violation. If he has information that a campaign is behind it, he should give the information to the Ethics Commission. If he has no such information, he should not be suggesting that another campaign is behind it.

Could another possibility be that Mr. Poliquin's notorious consultant did this, but was then chastised by the candidate?
I suppose I'm giving Mr. Poliquin too much leeway, but the fact that the material was removed directly after the press release was issued is curious. In the end Mr. Poliquin is responsible for what his operation does, but the erratic reaction points to perhaps a more complicated scenario.

The ad covers zero new ground. Why does it deserve analysis? Why the broadside from the Poliquin campaign?

What's that line about killing flies with shotguns?

From my conversations with Poliquin's people, I believe the genesis of their somewhat strong response, was the fact that it was posted by the "Hard Knox" account, and promoted by its Twitter account as well, and Hard Knox had spent the last two weeks talking up Bruce, retweeting him, and following relevant people...

In other words, they were worried it would be falsely associated with them, and wanted to be clear that it had nothing to do with them.

The campaign finance comment has its origins in their belief that it was professionally done - which I do not believe it was. It seems they believe(d) that a campaign had surreptitiously done the ad, posted it, and used a faux Poliquin supporter account to push it, to give the appearance of underhanded garbage going on from his side of things.

Not to say any of that is true, but that is the sense I got. I leave the conclusions to be drawn by you all.

Pardon my skepticism, but is this really what they think? It seems so contrived.
I think I'm confused about why the Poliquin people think it reflects poorly on them. If they had not reacted, would it really have been assumed they were the genesis of it?
Also, Mr. Gagnon, did they say what was different about the ad and what Mr. Murch wrote on your site several days ago? Not to repeat myself, but I fail to see the difference in accusation. Perhaps you can shed some light.

I have it on good authority from a source that I trust that the Otten campaign had nothing to do with the ad being taken down. They had decided to ignore it. I am glad to hear that the Otten campaign did not try to silence a critic and I give them credit for the correct approach.

I am increasingly irritated by Poliquin's approach to this issue. Is he going to put out a press release trying to silence me the next time I criticize Otten on AMG?

His allegation of law breaking is a serious one. If he does not have evidence that someone broke the law, he should retract that statement. We don't need a Governor who goes off half-cocked and accuses people of breaking the law simply for using their First Amendment right to free speech.

One fact is clear: we would not be discussing the stupid, poorly produced ad if not for the release from the Poliquin campaign. They made this a story.

First of all, Ed - please feel free to call me Matt.

Second, as to your question, let me give it a shot.

First off, as to why this would reflect poorly on them - the "ad" really does kind of take the gloves off. Previously Otten's business failure has only been mentioned in vague terms, and when gone into more specifics, usually is couched with the "Democrats will have a field day portraying this guy as a job killer" kind of stuff. This video doesn't even pretend to dance around it - they blame Otten for ASC's failure, lay it all at his feet, and then attack him as a failure who Maine can not afford in DIRECT terms.

Secondly, as to why they would think they would get pegged - again, go back to the Twitter account. If you didn't see my screen cap of the account, here it is:

http://www.pinetreepolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/hardknoxvol.jpg

It has been nixed now, so all that is left is the screen cap. It basically followed Bruce around like a puppy, retweeting him, lauding his performance at the "debate", etc. Also, Bruce's field director is from Tennessee, and it just so happened to be following a huge number of Tennessee people. In other words, somebody was either from Bruce's campaign, or was going to a lot of trouble to make it LOOK like they were involved in his campaign.

Now, for what it is worth, I honestly do not believe the campaign itself knew who the heck this person was - in fact, I had been asked by them if I knew who this person was last week, before they did or said anything controversial. Now, unless you are really cynical and believe that Bruce's campaign is Machiavellian to like the nth degree, that would represent quite an absurd layer of B.S. to go through just to set this whole thing up - seems like there would be better ways to do something negative on Otten if they wanted to... far less convoluted.

So my read on this is the same as it was when I wrote the article - they were aware of this guy, knew once that "ad" was posted that his Twitter account would be noticed and a connection would be made if they did not come out ahead of it and beat down that implication, so they came out with a press release. That may have been heavy handed, but you asked what they were thinking, and that is generally how I look at it.

Now, lastly, as for Garrett's article on Otten from last week - it needs to be understood that his article was written completely independently from the Poliquin campaign. Garrett asked me if he could write it over coffee at Starbucks down the block, and he was sending me drafts and I made edits on it for about a week before he published it. He is completely up front about being a supporter of Poliquin, but felt inclined to write his article out of fear that Otten would win the nomination and Republicans would then lose the Blaine House. He has said on a number of occasions that if one of the other candidates won, he would have obviously preferred Bruce, but he would support them. So, in short, it was divorced from the campaign, and was absolutley not their idea.

And, it should also be noted that Garrett's piece was much less a "hit job" on Otten, and more an argument that he would be easily attacked by Democrats, and would lose the election. His thesis was:

"Les Otten would severely depress Republican turnout, and be unusually vulnerable to Democratic and Independent attacks in the general election. An Otten nomination, in other words, would be a squandered opportunity."

So, much less "Otten is a scumbag" and much more "he'd be a disaster for the GOP if he got nominated". Hope that makes it all more clear.

Matt, thank you for the response.
So it goes that this mystery ad was created by someone from Tennessee, which also happens to be the home of the prime consultant on the campaign. And from Dan's statement, the Otten campaign did not seek to remove it. This leaves my previous hypothesis breathing new life- an overzealous consultant from out of state who may have just crossed his employer's line of ethics. Too clever by half, and forced to remove his handiwork by his own nervous charge.
Very interesting.

Les Otten's business ups-and-downs were parsed in detail on this 3-page AMG thread started on December 2, 2009:

Otten for Governor Launches Statewide Advertising Campaign

skf

http://sportsnation.espn.go.com/fans/HardKnoxVOL#/fans/HardKnoxVOL/groups

Zip code he lists is from Lawrenceville, GA

Interesting...

It appears there is a mole inside the Poliquin campaign who jumped ship about 2 weeks ago - this is a continuation of their dirty tricks campaign.

Poor Bruce. He should have hired someone on the ground in Maine to vet his campaign.

I have seen Bruce out and about at several recent events. It appears his 'staff' which is always in tow has an (I am being generous) average age of 20. Might have something to do with it.

ROFL, nice find, can apply to (Insert Any Politician's name Here)

Matt Gagnon - welcome to the AMG forum!

I am baffled by all of this... I saw Jacobson last week and jokingly asked if his camp had anything to do with this, and he laughingly declined any knowledge prior to all the hub bub.

Otten should have run as an Independent if he really wanted a shot to win. He has no chance of winning the primary in my opinion.

Who really ends up the winner in this whole scenario? Certainly not Poliquin or Otten... Abbott, Mills and Jacobson split a small percentage of Otten's votes and Lepage and Beardsley get a few of Poliquins and two rich guys are likely not going to be around come July.

Thrasybulus says, "poor Bruce". There is no need to commiserate with Bruce. He committed political suicide all by himself. I look for Poloquin and Otten to eventually run as independents. Their egos will let them do no less. Let them bash each other until exhausted, both physically and financially. They are both irrelevant.