Romney, Dirty Tricks Edition
From the Boston Globe, Nov. 4 2002:
A last-minute round of accusations roiled the gubernatorial
campaign yesterday when an independent conservative group blitzed Boston
radio with an ad that urged supporters of Green Party candidate Jill
Stein to vote for Republican Mitt Romney.
The ad features a man
and a woman who praise Stein, but decide to vote for Romney as a
practical matter. The woman refers to Stein admiringly as "a female
version of Senator [Paul] Wellstone," referring to the liberal US
senator who died in a plane crash in Minnesota 10 days ago.
Supporters of Democrat Shannon O'Brien called for the ad to be pulled
off the air, saying that it exploited Wellstone's death for political
purposes.
An OCPF investigation eventually discovered that the key guy behind that ad was long-time Bain Capital cohort and Romney buddy Robert Maginn. If Romney didn't care for this kind of tactic, it's a little odd that he subsequently made Maginn co-chair of his national presidential fundraising committee, and just recently helped install him as Mass. GOP chair (where he will handle national inquiries into the former governor's record). As I recently wrote:
In the final days of that 2002 race, Maginn,
along with deep-pocketed GOP donor John Childs, secretly funded a radio
ad urging supporters of Green Party candidate Jill Stein to vote for
Romney. Maginn and Childs each funneled $25,000 through an attorney to a
Washington front group, avoiding disclosure requirements for ads in the
final week of an election.
Maginn
and Childs fessed up to the dirty trick after the election, when the
state Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) traced the money
to them. They were penalized with a laughable $500 fine.