What follows is an open letter from yours truly to Rick Coelho, the campaign manager for Kelda Roys’ Congressional campaign.
Dear Rick:
I understand you’re a really busy guy, what with the Congressional campaign you’re managing for Kelda Roys, but I wanted to take a minute to share some thoughts with you.
I used to appreciate the emails I get from you about Rep. Roys’ campaign – emails I’m sure a bunch of my fellow bloggers have also been receiving – but what I don’t appreciate is the one-way street that your emails have become. You’ve taken to ignoring my emails back to you with inquiries about the campaign and the press releases you issue, which is odd considering that you’ve harangued me in the past for not contacting you with questions/concerns/comments.
Perhaps you’ve taken to ignoring my emails because you believe my coverage of the race in the second Congressional district has been biased (which I admit it has), but ignoring my emails certainly isn’t going to win me over to your cause, nor is it going to endear me to the candidate you’re working for. After all, the staff a candidate chooses to surround him or herself with – and the behavior of said staff – really does reflect on the judgment of the candidate, and in your case, I’m not impressed with Kelda Roys’ judgment.
In summation, I don’t ever want to hear a complaint from you about how your candidate is treated or that the coverage she received was biased against her, nor do I want to hear grousing from you about how I didn’t even bother to try and contact your campaign to get your side of things before I wrote something unfavorable about Kelda Roys.
While you’re at it, why not go ahead and remove me from your email list, because I’m uninterested in what you – or the campaign you’re managing has to say.
Sincerely,
Zach W
I am officially endorsing Mark Pocan for U.S. House in Wisconsin’s 2nd Congressional District.
I unsubbed from this guy a while back. Too bad because I like Kelda. I think the email campaigns some candidates use actually do them more harm than good. I unsubbed from Obama when. Biden’s wife used the mailing list to celebrate Joe’s birthday. Huh? Give me a break!
Shocker, you criticizing a woman democratic candidate running in a primary against a man.
Shocker…here comes “John” to throw out the sexism card.
“John,” do you believe that women running for office or holding elected office should be immune from the same criticisms as their male counterparts simply because of their gender?
There is a pattern of you holding woman and minority candidates to a higher standard than white males in Democratic Primaries. Every elected official, or person running for office needs to be held to a high standard and criticized even when they are on our side, but you do not hold women and minority candidates to that same standard and give white males more leeway. Maybe you just never write positive stories about women candidates like you do male ones and that is why your pattern exists. It could be an honest mistake, but I do not think so after reading your stuff for the past 2+ years.
Here’s something positive about Tammy Baldwin.
Here’s another.
You might want to read these entries
And there’s this.
Those are just a few of the examples of positive entries I’ve written about women, yet you take exception to criticisms I have of candidates/elected officials I’m betting you support. You can’t cherry-pick simply to try to prove a point.
Your problem is that you can’t look past your own biases to see the truth.
You apparently have a reading comprehension problem.
“There is a pattern of you holding woman and minority candidates to a higher standard than white males in Democratic Primaries.”
John, attack me all you want, but cherry picking a few instances out of the hundreds of times I’ve written about women candidates and elected officials as “proof” that I’m a sexist hardly seems logical. Cherry-pick all you want, but I stand behind what I’ve written (and what I’ve done) to generally support women who hold elected office or are candidates for elected office.
Further, I’d note that my criticisms of Kelda have been on point.
She wants to attack Mark Pocan for voting with Republicans on a tax break for job creators, yet she voted with Republican Rep. Joel Kleefisch on a bill that would enable companies to play communities against each other. She’s far from being a “perfect progressive,” and I’m reminded of the saying that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Zach, I applaud your decision & forthcoming nature in this issue. I too grew tired of the inane emails from her campaign.
“John-” I highly suggest you read the coverage from Zach and others regarding candidates like Tammy Baldwin and Lori Compas if you’ve read things here for 2+ years. More likely that you’re a first-timer working on a campaign, and you just don’t know better.
Kelda and her spokesman Coelho are rightfully being ripped because of their lame, obnoxious emails and pathetic reaches in an attempt to smear front-runner Mark Pocan. I’m like SuzyMetta- I like Kelda, like what she stands for (we attended a protest outside of Chase Bank last October, for example), and would gladly vote for her if there wasn’t a candidate as good as Pocan out there. But these fundraising emails do her no favors, probably hurt her more than help her, and I’ve unsubbed as well.
Neither of those candidates were in primaries, which is what I criticized him for. The only time Zach writes positive stories about women and African American candidates is when they are running against republicans. The pattern is extremely clear and frankly is embarrassing to him which is why he criticizes anyone who brings it up. I can think of at least 3 women and two African American candidates in just the last 6 months.
Compas was in a primary, although she ran against, and defeated with 72% of the vote, Gary Ellerman, a fake Democrat that was planted by the Wisconsin GOP. Compas ultimately lost the recall general election in SD-13 to Scott Fitzgerald, a real Republican.
John, you are race baiting and gender baiting on this website, and that is not acceptable.
Why are liberals fighting each other? there are much more important evils to fight. Please sit down together, figgure out how to best beat the real monsters. Tammy , Mark , Kelda, Tom Barret, Vinehout,Falk love all of the lefties very dearly. thanks for your hard work.
Does anyone know which bill is referred to in Pocan’s commercial about “cracking down on companies that ship jobs overseas?” I can’t figure out how that could be done on a state level. Would like to know which bill it was and what session
Rick, that would be the American Jobs Act Pocan helped get enacted, mandating that state funds not be used to contract for services abroad.