Notes from the Altmire/Hart race

I found this at the Beaver County Times. Written by the aptly-named JD Prose.

Seems that Congresswoman Melissa Hart's been busy. She sent out a press release on Wednesday that shows that, while she isn't in Rick Santorum's league in terms of deception and manipulation (but then again, who is?), she's certainly capable of a fair amount of obfuscating - no question.

As an aside, what happened to that Health-Care debate? Shouldn't Missy be preparing for that instead of wasting our time with misleading press releases?

Here's what she said in the release:

(Cranberry Township, PA) -- Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show that former lobbyist Jason Altmire has accepted the support of a rabidly pro-choice group – donations that now thrown into question his claim that he is a pro-life candidate.

FEC records indicate that lobbyist Altmire’s campaign accepted $3,000 from the National Committee for an Effective Congress (NCEC).* On its own website, the NCEC describes the candidates they support as “progressive candidates who fight for the issues we believe in, like freedom of choice, separation of church and state, gun control …” and in a September 2003 The National Journal referred to the NCEC as the “granddaddy of liberal political action committees.

“Lobbyist Altmire has a lot of explaining to do to all the people he has told he is pro-life. With his experience as a lobbyist, maybe Jason can reconcile his acceptance of this money and his pro-life lip service, but the people of southwestern Pennsylvania will not be fooled,” said Hart campaign manager Luke Myslinski.

“We should not be too surprised by this development, Jason did have pro-choice and liberal superstar Howard Dean in to boost his sagging campaign,” Myslinski added. “The fact that one of his biggest donors is a pro-abortion rights, pro-gun control liberal group is why respected organizations like the NRA and National Right to Life backed Melissa Hart – not him.”

Is it that easy? He gets a contribution from an organization that Missy Hart describes as "rabidly pro-choice" and that "throws into question" his position on Abortion?

That should come as a pleasant surprise to millions of women across the nation (including the Other Political Junkie) because FEC records also show, for instance, that The National Committee for an Effective Congress also gave money to Bob Casey, jr. and Senator Ben Nelson - hardly the most pro-choice candidates around. But according to Missy's logic, they're stance on choice is now "thrown into question." Thanks, Missy!

But that's not all - there's something else that Missy Hart left out. Prose writes:

[Campaign Spokeswoman Christina] Stacey said the NCEC donation was not monetary but an in-kind contribution for "precinct targeting data" in the May primary. That information was available to all Democrats, "even pro-life Democrats," she said.

Turns out that's exactly true (it's way down the bottom of the page - go look).

It's interesting to note that the Hart-folks obviously had enough web-savvy to find the FEC documents about NCEC's "contribution" to Altmire, but wouldn't you know it, they say anything about how FEC documents describe them as "in-kind."

How convenient.