Thursday, May 6, 2010

SD 40: Thuggary doesn’t play

The race between Salas and Vargas has been soiled for the last month ever since Salas began launching hit pieces against Vargas for being a tool of the insurance industry.

The Vargas camp responded with physical intimidation. From CityBeat:


Vargas dispatched several campaign staffers to crash Salas’ press conference—emphasis on “crash.” A skirmish between the two staffs resulted in one Salas worker falling, banging his head and taking a trip to urgent care, which the Salas campaign characterized as hospitalization in a press release sent immediately after the event.


Where I come from, boys get physical as a schoolyard response to an out of control situation. Press conferences aren’t out of control but making them such becomes the story. In other write-ups of this incident, the scuffle has been the lead to the make point that Salas was trying to make.


And more:

The Vargas campaign retaliated by e-mailing CityBeat several documents, including flyers accusing Salas of being “hypocritical and deceitful” because, over the course of her political career, she has accepted $75,000 from CJAC members.



We’d like to point out that a) that’s still roughly a 10th of what CJAC has spent on Vargas just this cycle, b) accusing your opponent of being just as corporate as you are is not a winning argument and c) replacing the first S in Salas’ name with a dollar sign is just weak.


Salas wins this one. The Vargas campaign’s attempt to thwart a story only made it larger.