Politics, Lies and Video Tape

The latest installment in the soap opera known as Kentucky’s U.S. Senate primary has had some knew twists and turns over the last few days.

Over the weekend it was revealed that Jack Conway had artificially inflated his fund raising numbers with a last minute 6-figure influx from his personal fortune.

Is there anything wrong with that? Legally no, ethically no. Then why is it a story? Because the Conway campaign made a very big deal last week about their superior fundraising. The media dutifully reported the story without close analysis. So they got a news cycle of ‘Conway continues fundraising advantage’ and not ‘Conway fundraising numbers drop over 50%.’

When one of there own (Al Cross) thought to push Conway on his personal contributions he got the vague answer “over six figures.” That news has slowly rippled through the media leaving a bad taste in their mouths. (When the actual numbers become available, in the next few days) we will find out just how much Conway inflated the numbers.

This leads us to yesterday and the Mongiardo Campaign’s effort to dump the recent You Tube videos at the feet of the Conway Campaign. By and large the media took Kim Gevendon’s story uncontested. Let’s for the time being give them the benefit of the doubt and say they’re version is accurate. What does it really mean? It means that at least one Conway person (volunteer or staffer ???) who is clearly very young decided to pile. At best, he embarrassed is candidate and at worst violated federal campaign finance law.

Conway’s newly minted campaign manager Charles Halloran hasn’t seem to learn anything from his predecessor’s missteps after Fancy Farm and while not denying the campaign’s involvement, which implies they were involved called the accusation silly.

It’s not that he wrong – the whole thing is silly. When the Conway Campaign choose to make hay over these heavily edited tapes they lost the moral high ground and if can be proven that they willfully violated federal campaign finance law they may end up loosing the election.

Question: Would the media have played up the Mongiardo version as much if Conway hadn’t mislead them last week about his fundraising? Personally, I don’t think so.

The lessons here: Don’t piss of the media, keep tighter control over your staff and keep you mouth shut around tape recorders.