Rebekah Warren: can’t spell “legislative”, but can probably spell “lobbyist”
        One can’t help smiling at the “Why Rebekah” section of Rebekah Warren’s website (for the 53rd District Democratic primary campaign) that says, “Rebekah’s progressive values and leglislative experience [etc.]“
        What is…”leglislative”? Is she trying to say “legislative”? If you want to be a LEGISLATor, you may want to know how to spell the word correctly… Â
        R. Wa is welcome to correct it (maybe she will by the time you read this), but I printed a copy and may make a scan of it. (She can always send me a check for being her campaign proofreader, heh…)
        If that were her only problem, I might not mind much. (Although somebody who can’t proofread her own website might not be the most competent person in the State House, either…) However, there’s more.
        To start off with: on her website, R. Wa has run letters and supporter statements for weeks, maybe over a month, now, which seem to imply her opponent is some sinister supporter of special interests or something.
        However, despite her relentless negative campaigning against others, I wonder if Warren is the “friend of the people” herself; see, e.g., her recent campaign contribution (click on the 8/3/06 “Late Contribution Report”) from the PAC of high-powered Lansing lobbying firm Karoub Associates (a PAC which has, interestingly, apparently also supported the “Pro Life” 89th District Republican state representative candidate Mike Hewitt). Not that lobbying is always a bad thing, but Warren is hardly just taking money from “Jill/Joe Average Citizen” either, by taking the Karoub money.
        (This direct link to the late report may also work, but is a little temperamental. By the way, I just found about that contribution last night, so am reporting today.)
        In my interview of him, Leigh Greden graciously said that Warren’s Lansing experience is a plus; however, he could have easily pointed out that one could be around Lansing too long, as well. (Has Warren been? Hmm.) Being overly familiar with the territory is not always a good thing for any candidate, whoever it is…
        There’s a lot more to say about Rebekah Warren, especially since she is so ready to criticize others; stay tuned!
August 5th, 2006 at 8:43 am
Thanks for the proof catch! We’ve already fixed it. I’m the one responsible for the misspelling, by the way. It’s no secret that I’m the webmaster for the campaign–volunteer, as well, in addition to my many other duties–so it’s my bad.
Eric Lagergren
volunteer for the Rebekah Warren campaign
August 5th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
You’re welcome!
August 5th, 2006 at 11:26 pm
[...]         In the last post about Rebekah Warren we noted the donation from a powerful Lansing lobbying firm (after all of her campaign’s castigating Leigh Greden); in this post, we look at the issue of “special interests” a little further.         Warren’s website has long featured, in the right column of the front page, a quote, [...]
August 9th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
David,
I’m just wondering how you feel about having attacked Rebekah Warren’s competency in this way, when the candidate you supported - Leigh Greden - could not even ensure that *his own name* was spelled correctly in his half-page AA News advertisement the day before the election. For the record, Greden’s ad also referred to “Councilwoman Chris Easthope”. Perhaps your superb spell-checking services could have been of some use to the Greden campaign. Alas…
August 9th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
If this is so, it is worthy of criticism, as you say. I wouldn’t mind seeing a copy. Thanks for mentioning!
August 10th, 2006 at 12:29 am
As a member of the Greden campaign team, I am happy to announce that the mistakes that were made in the Ann Arbor News…
Leigh Geden
Councilwoman Easthope
and Major Heifije
…were completely the mistakes of the Ann Arbor News. The draft that Leigh sent to the paper was checked multiple times and was correct. Furthermore, it was the topic of many jokes and provided much laughter, but I believe that the Greden Campaign was pursuing the possibility of a partial refund for the mistakes made by the News.
…Sorry to burst your bubble Luke, but your and other Warren supporters’ continued attempts to attack Leigh’s campaign, even after the election, do not hold water.
August 10th, 2006 at 1:12 am
Travis,
While I share your happiness in the fact that you were a member of the Greden campaign team, the above comment was not an “attack” on anything, but rather a question regarding Mr. Boyle’s clearly one-sided nitpicking in his coverage of this race. It is certainly believable that the newspaper was at fault in this case, and not the Greden campaign itself.
Oh, also: Rebekah Warren defeated Leigh Greden by 1855 votes, or 22% of all votes cast. In other words, for the politically impaired (you), Greden lost decisively (to say the least). My “bubble” is alive and well, but thanks for your concern.
August 10th, 2006 at 3:06 am
As I said above, I wasn’t aware of the Greden campaign spelling errors. I rarely read print editions of many newspapers, often seeing only the online editions (and missing a lot of ads, etc.). But thanks for pointing out the errors!
August 10th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
I realize that the Warren Camp won in the primary election, and congratulations. You should be very proud that your candidate won. However, I just thought it was interesting to note that you are continuing to attack the Greden Campaign, even after you won, and your attacks still are baseless, fact-less, and innaccurate!
Congratulations on a campaign filled with negative campaign, divisive politics, and inaccurate information.
August 12th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Travis,
I’m sorry - I’m failing to see precisely which comments of mine you felt were “baseless, fact-less, and inaccurate”. Leigh Greden’s ad in Monday’s Ann Arbor News contained multiple typographical errors, including a misspelling of the candidate’s name. Are you prepared to dispute this fact? If you read my above comments again, you’ll see that they contain no “attack” on anyone, and only mention the advertisement’s errors for the purpose of drawing attention to the poor quality of Mr. Boyle’s coverage of the race.
The fact, however, that you interpret this as an “attack” perfectly illustrates the type of knee-jerk propensity for rhetorical vomit that led to your departure from Rebekah Warren’s campaign. I can’t tell if you are insincere or just dim, but neither Ms. Warren nor anyone on her staff has had anything to do with “negative” campaigning, or anything approaching it. You may believe any time your candidate is not showered with affection that someone, somewhere must be guilty of attack politics and negative campaigning. This is simply not so, and betrays a paranoia and naïveté that you might not want to advertise so publicly.
The fact is that candidates at every level of government often do a service to the electorate by raising questions about their opponents’ ability to hold public office. As long as these questions are based on a voting record, published material, etc. - and are demonstrably relevant to the responsibilities of holding said office - it is certainly not “negative” anything. Perhaps the best way to deal with such a situation - rather than crying “attack!” - is to simply work harder to communicate a counter-message to voters. Acting as an apologist for Mr. Greden’s inability to do so is pretty silly. You should just move on.
August 12th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
Luke,
I am sorry if I went over the top with your above post. While you are correct that you didn’t specifically “attack” Leigh’s campaign, you definitely implied that he was at fault and because I felt that the tone of the primary was extremely negative, I was already fed up….so I apologize about the above.
Also, my direct contact with the Warren campaign was at a time when there was definitely negative campaigning being planned by Ms. Warren, and her staff. I actually could probably look up the email that Luke (I assume you are the same person…but since you haven’t given your last name, I can’t jump to that conclusion), a student volunteer of Rebekah’s, sent me when I voiced my concerns with her “Couch-In” plans. It specifically stated that the couch in was coming from the Warren campaign and that voicing concerns was simply being counterproductive. Luke was actually a major reason why I left the Warren team.
Furthermore, I strongly feel that true Democrats should want primaries to be completely about platforms, records, and goals. I think it is horrific that Democrats would want to tear eachother apart in a primary, because it only serves to weaken the party and the candidates. That is why I take immediate offense to negative tones that relate to nitpicking at candidates to simply drag them through the mud….if you ask David, I am sure he will tell you that I voiced my concern with his original post attacking Rebekah for her misspelling…and I also mentioned it to Leigh when I told him I was drafting a response, telling him that I was unsure that I wanted to send it to Dave, because I felt he lost credibility when he posted something like a misspelling on Rebekah’s site, which she probably didn’t even type herself.
I will be supporting Rebekah in November and if I am still registered in Ann Arbor, i will likely vote for her. I don’t wish to continue to squabble over her campaign, because I accept that she is the winner and the Democratic Party candidate for State Rep. However, I was just really pissed off when you posted a comment AFTER the primary that was tearing down Greden’s campaign even more.
I agree, it is time to move on, I just hope that in the future Democrats stop attacking Democrats.
August 15th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
Travis,
I suggest you do look up that e-mail I sent to you. If and when you do, you’ll find that I went out of my way to reassure you that I felt your concerns were valid, and worthy of consideration by Rebekah Warren’s campaign staff and the members of Students for Warren. The *first line* of the e-mail reads: “I understand your concern, and I agree that it is something the Exec. board of SFW should discuss”. How much clearer should I have been? The e-mail does, of course, remind you that your chosen method of voicing these concerns - sending an e-mail to the *entire* SFW list - was, in fact, counterproductive and a rather enormous blunder. So, once again, your inability to simply read a bunch of words strung together into a paragraph has undermined your effort to make a coherent argument.
And further - you claim that you want primaries to concern “platforms, records, and goals.” As you apparently do not wish to comprehend, the planned Students for Warren “Couch-In” was intended to highlight a exceedingly pertinent aspect of Mr. Greden’s record, that being his intention to disenfranchise his student constituents in passing a couch-ban during the summer months of 2004 (and if you want to see the e-mail that proves that fact, I’d be happy to show it to you). Yes Travis, we all know that Mr. Greden tabled the motion in the end; what you always seem to want to ignore is that he introduced it in the first place, and only tabled it in response to the understandably alarmed reaction of the community.
Pointing out that a man running to represent most of Ann Arbor could not honorably represent the 3rd Ward is clearly relevant, and SFW’s efforts were based on reports published in the Ann Arbor News, Detroit Free Press, and other publications. I’m still waiting for a valid explanation from you on how this constitutes an “attack” or “negative campaigning”.
August 16th, 2006 at 2:34 am
How nice to be back. –Thanks to Travis, but when a candidate posts a misspelling, the CANDIDATE loses credibility, not the one noticing it. (Despite Travis’s admirable admiration for positive campaigning, and I think he did mention to me at some point that he didn’t think it necessary for me to mention the Warren misspelling) A candidate may not run the electronic aspect of the website, but she is certainly responsible for proofreading, one imagines…
As for Luke, the Force is clearly not with Luke when he descends to the Dark Side of using language like “…illustrates the type of knee-jerk propensity for rhetorical vomit that led to your departure from Rebekah Warren’s campaign. I can’t tell if you are insincere or just dim….” I think Luke may simply not understand the idea of negative campaigning, from that excerpt; Luke certainly negatively campaigns against Travis there.
As for “quality” of my commentary, I didn’t find any use of state resources by Greden, I don’t read print versions of newspapers, usually (and the candidate has more control over what goes on her/his own website than what a newspaper prints), I didn’t notice much negative campaigning by Greden, etc. Reality was not flattering to the Warren campaign, so I printed what I saw, whether her supporters liked it or not. She was lucky enough to win, but like Bush v. Kerry and Gore, merely winning certainly does not vindicate a person. Good luck to her, and she will be watched closely to ensure she is a humble and honest servant of us all, working hard for our benefit on our taxpayer money for which I am sure she is (or should be) deeply grateful.
August 17th, 2006 at 1:19 am
Luke…the fact that Leigh brought the “couch ban” to the table shows that he is willing to listen to his constituents and is also concerned about their safety.
Leigh was contacted by Ann Arbor safety officials (firefighters and I believe some police officers) and was asked to do something about couches because they are regularly fighting fires that are started on couch porches. Leigh brought the motion to the table after having a valid interest in protecting the public…and then after listening to both sides, allowing suitable debate, and meeting with the very students (that you claim he is trying to disenfranchise) he chose to table the motion, respecting students rights to have those couches.
The purpose of the “couch-in” was not meant to enlighten people on the issue, because there was never, while I was involved (which was until after the couch-in), any discussion about providing information that Leigh tabled it.
Lastly, I am not going to continue this petty argument about the legitimacy about my leaving Rebekah’s campaign, because I have no interest in attacking Rebekah (and I have made it very clear that I left because I didn’t like the negative direction some of the campaign had taken). I have a lot of respect for many of the volunteers and staff members that I met while working with her, and I have no intention of trying to tear her down as a candidate. I, personally, find you to be abrasive, dishonest, and blatantly rude, and I hope for Rebekah’s sake you don’t have direct contact with many of her potential voters. Furthermore, if you honestly think that openly attacking my intelligence and my ability to understand politics, when I am a student at one of the nation’s leading public universities is strengthening your argument (or wearing me down) you are sadly mistaken.
Good luck on Rebekah’s campaign…and I wish you the best of luck in being capable of being able to intelligently debate someone, without simply attacking them personally every few sentances!
October 13th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Interesting. Interesting. Interesting, to say the least.
But now I am exceedinly curious as to the nature of Luke and Travis’ relationship while on Warren’s campaign. You both must hatch out this story for your readers! Was there an immediate animosity between you two? were you fighting for power within the campaign? what went on! Seriously, this is great stuff. Perhaps I should fuel the fire a bit by pointing out that, rather than a battle for truth (though the debating of fact is a significant portion of this dialogue), this duel seems most fittingly described as a battle of wits.
I sense that Travis was at first intent on engaging Luke on this level, but eventually ‘tapped out’ so to speak, resorting to courteous reflection and work place niceties to give him an edge; he did this in order to appear bigger, above it all, unaffected, and gracious. I was not impressed by this tactic. And, if my assessment is accurate, I must give the advantage to Luke after the first couple of rounds.