Cam-A-Lot Ends in a Whimper, Politics of Personal Destruction Come to Indiana

After days of huffing and puffing, and then huffing and puffing some more, and some more huffing still after that, the Indiana Democratic Party managed at last to get someone to bite on their allegations of a contracting scandal involving Cam Savage, the communications director for Mitch Daniels’ reelection campaign.

Unfortunately for them, the Indianapolis Star saw fit to bury the story on page B3, sensing–rightly–that it was much ado about nothing.

Another of Dan Parker’s teapot tempests.

At Advance Indiana, Gary Welsh termed it hitting “a dry hole” and noted the silence of Democrats about the Peterson administration’s much larger questionable contracts (to say nothing of those in the Bayh, O’Bannon, and Kernan administrations).

Frugal Hoosiers, which sometimes seems to be a blog about the people working in the campaign instead of the guy whose campaign they are trying to advance, had a typical response.

As confirmed by documents produced by the state in response to the public relations stunt request by the Democrats, Savage ended the contract before he went to work for the governor.

Indeed, the immediacy of the termination of the contract–they did not even wait the normal thirty days–indicates a clear awareness of the need to not be in a state contract and also be involved with the governor’s campaign, and shows that they ended the relationship to prevent that potential conflict of interest.

That overlap, so clearly demonstrated now to not be the case, was at the heart of the Democratic complaint about Savage and all of the political hopes they had vested in it.

Without any overlap, this is just another state contract.

Heck, it could be said that the Governor’s people liked Savage’s work so much in that brief time that they hired him away from the state to work on the Daniels campaign.

Stretching, I know, but still.

Despite continued bleatings at Taking Down Words, the whole thing ended with a whimper and not a bang, a story devoid of the legs Democrats had been hoping for.

This wasn’t enough for Jen Wagner, the Democrats’ communications director and author of the Democratic Party’s mouthpiece blog.

Frequently during the whole thing, she proclaimed Savage to be a “nice guy” that once gave her a t-shirt at a Daniels campaign event.

I somehow doubt the communications director for the Democratic Party fully appreciated the gift of one of those green “My Man Mitch” shirts.

Maybe the shirt wasn’t available in a maternity size, or maybe Wagner just has a visceral hatred of the color green.

It could be, perhaps, that her shoes are too tight, or maybe her head isn’t screwed on just right, or her heart is two sizes too small.

Anyhow, she certainly expressed her gratitude interestingly.

When the state provided her with unredacted and unmodified documents–per the request of Dan Parker and the Indiana Democratic Party (imagine the furor if the documents had contained sections that were blacked out)–on the termination of Savage’s contract, she scanned them and put them online on the Internet for all to see.

She did not black out Savage’s social security number or his bank account routing number, which were present on the paperwork.

When confronted an hour later, she professed it to be an innocent mistake.

Sort of like it was an innocent mistake when she blared the social security number and personal information of Republican congressional candidate Eric Dickerson over the Internet when he ran against Julia Carson in 2006 (among other personal information and assorted smears she has trafficked in on her blog for years).

Once could be explained as an accident or a mistake. Twice cannot, particularly when her pattern of behavior with regard to other political adversaries is so clearly demonstrated.

Taking Down Words singularly leads the way in engaging in this sort of despicable behavior, dragging political discourse in Indiana to ever lower depths.

This post is also available at Hoosierpundit.