New Hampshire Rep. Carol Shea-Porter Breaks her Campaign Promise

 Carol Shea-Porter beat Jeb Bradley in 2006 using a grassroots effort. Retail politics is what she called it. With little organization and money behind her she was able to pull off a huge upset because of the anti-Bush, anti-Republican mood in New Hampshire.

 She promised that she would always run this way because Washington needed to be changed. She said money was ruining Washington. Just last year she refused to join the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s fundraising program. This would have made it easy for her to receive national donations. She said she was doing this because she was going to run the same type of campaign as her last one.

 She went to Washington to chance it, but now Washington has changed her. She has now decided that she will accept money from the DCCC after all. Why this change of heart? The nasty, evil Republicans, of course.

But Shea-Porter campaign manager Pia Carusone said yesterday the 1st District freshman had always maintained that if the Republicans began running an expensive, negative campaign against her, she would reconsider.

“This week, it became clear that the Republicans will not play by the New Hampshire tradition of low-cost campaigning, and she has to have the ability to respond to these attacks and not let these guys mislead voters,” Carusone said.

 It’s always those damned Republicans isn’t it? Are we really supposed to believe that it is Jeb Bradley or John Stevens’ fault? Are we supposed to believe that poor ole Carol didn’t want to spend allot of money but she was forced to because of some right wing attack machine? Come on Carol, get a grip. This is politics.

 In my opinion there are two real reasons why she has decided to break her promise and here they are in no particular order:

• Democrat party insiders pulled her aside and warned her that she needs to accept money because the Democrats want to pick up huge majorities in November. She has to play by the rules or she will be on the outs with leadership even if she were to win without them. She naturally followed along, because that is what she has done over 90% of the time. Leading her to be dubbed in New Hampshire with Paul Hodes as the Pelosi twins.
• Her re-election is in serious jepordy. She is currently trailing in the polls to Jeb Bradley and her approval rating is lower than the president’s. She needs all the help she can get to hold onto the power that she now craves.

  It’s funny how quickly your values can change when you face the very real possibility that you can lose the power that you have so easily become addicted to. This is what has happened to Carol Shea-Porter. This about face is certainly made more hypocritical based on the fact that her whole campaign was based on being an outsider and running a small retail campaign.

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