October 21, 2009

by Michael Patrick Leahy

10:00 am EDT

The campaign to win the special election for the 23rd Congressional District in upstate New York just got a little bit weirder this morning, if that's possible. Liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava, feeling the heat from the surge in the polls of Conservative Doug Hoffman, held a press conference this morning outside his Watertown headquarters to challenge him to a debate.

This bizarre behavior came on a day when her highly controverisal campaign manager, Matt Burns, sent out a flurry of press releases on a wide range of topics. The entire country is focused on this election, and Burns appears to be a man completely undisciplined and out of control.

The editor of Dede Scozzafava's hometown online newspaper, Nathan Barker of the Gouverneur Times, was surprised this morning when he received five separate press releases from Scozzafava's campaign. This followed up on the two he received from the campaign yesterday afternoon. The seven Scozzafava press releases during a 24 hour period contrasted sharply with the one he received from the Democrat Bill Owens's campaign, and the zero releases he received from Conservative Doug Hoffman's campaign.

"It seems like Burns is pushing Dede's campaign in directions Dede wouldn't be comfortable with. Obviously his quotes in response to the Weekly Standard reporter, the police reports didn't indicate anything like that. I can concur will Bill Krystol that if I publish a piece favorable to Hoffman, he's right on the phone very vocally saying 'What are you doing, why don't you endorse Hoffman completely?' He'll ignore saying anything about previous articles we've written that are favorable about Dede"

Barker was baffled by Burns' behavior, and how it seems to be influencing an already reeling Scozzafava campaign

"Prior to this campaign, I've never seen anything out of Dede's Assembly office that's as inflammatory as this is."







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