Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Ed Martin Addresses the Hackman Charge


In the video above from SolidPrinciples, Ed Martin (R) addresses the Russ Carnahan (D-MO) campaign's "Hackman" attack, but let me first provide some background.... well, I'll let the left-leaning RFT provide some background [emphasis added]:
On August 27, 2007, reporter Tony Messenger of the Springfield News-Leader sent the governor's office a modest request under Missouri's Sunshine Law, which ensures that government records are open to the public. Messenger wanted copies of any e-mails that Martin had sent to a certain pro-life group during the previous week.

Blunt's staff responded that no such e-mails existed.

Messenger insisted they did. A source had already forwarded one to him. And he believed that it strongly suggested that Martin was mixing "partisan campaigning with the process of doing his state job," or working for the GOP while on the public dime.

Martin acknowledged writing the e-mail in question, but maintained — and still does today — that all of his correspondence was policy-based, and therefore legit.

In that case, Messenger argued, the documents were public record and had to be retained. Yet Blunt staffers insisted at first that none of their e-mails were public record. That's exactly why they were getting deleted.

Deleted? The media collectively gasped. "Memogate" had begun.

...

Blunt wrangled with the investigators for a year, then finally agreed to release the records free of charge. When reporters pored over them, they discovered hundreds of e-mails responsive to Tony Messenger's original request. Martin had deleted them — before, he says, the request came in — but they'd been retained on backup tapes.

"I did not, and I don't think anybody did think, that a normal request for Sunshine information required retrieval from the backup tapes," Martin later said in a deposition.

Interestingly, when Messenger finally got his hands on Martin's e-mails — the ones the governor's office fought so hard to protect — the worst he could write was that they were "questionably relevant to state business." The scandal, it turned out, had more to do with Blunt's resistance to releasing the e-mails, than their actual content.
Hackman is Russ Carnahan's marketing play on Memogate, but the irony is that the requested emails were released and they exonerated Ed Martin. It's a non-issue.

In the video above, Ed not only deflects the Hackman attack, but also refers to the fact that Russ Carnahan did not show up at a candidate forum in Ste. Genevieve, but sent a DVD recording to represent him. Honestly, Missouri's Third Congressional District should be better represented not only in Washington, DC, but more importantly in Ste. Genevieve, MO, and the man who will do that is Ed Martin.

1 comment:

Zotta's Perspective said...

Ed are you getting any royalties from the game?