Saturday, September 1, 2007

News from the Burkee/Walz Media Blitz

* Rep. Sensenbrenner is clearly taking the competition for his 5th CD seat serious. So seriously that the prolific junketeer spent some of the congressional recess in Germany, no doubt lobbying the distant relatives of his largely Teutonic district. This is a bold electoral strategy, and likely an expensive one, but if there is a seasoned global traveler who can pull it off, Sensenbrenner's the man for the job.

* A Sheboygan Press editorial calls the Burkee/Walz effort "a breath of fresh air," which is a phrase that can also be used to describe a yawn.

* James Wigderson offers his two cents:

So when Walz and Burkee make all these promises about running nice-nice campaigns, it’s because there is nothing at stake for them. There is no chance either one of them is going to win.


"Nice-nice?" Surely a columnist can find a better adjective. I realize the rhetorical angle Wigderson is going for here is making the strategy of a cordial campaign seem naive and juvenile, but "nice-nice" just sounds lazy.

* Burkee's niece appears to be helping out from a distance.

* This dude seems on board.

* All in all, there's really not a whole lot to pass on. If the B&W team was trying to take advantage of the end-of-summer media lull and hoped to fill that void by inspiring some good-natured human interest think pieces on the nature of contemporary political discourse, it didn't really work. It probably would have made more sense to kick off the campaign after the beginning of the school year since they are relying on students for much of their campaign staff and support, and it's a lot easier to rally that group together once they're back on campus.

2 comments:

Josh Schroeder said...

I don't remember where I read it, but F. James Sensenbrenner travels to Europe were paid for either by lobbyists or with tax dollars. I don't remember which, but it wasn't out of pocket.

But that would be funny if he actually flew to Deutschland to raise money for his campaign.

After all, didn't the Hessian Mercinaries fight alongside us in the Revolutionary War?

Jb said...

You can find a registry of all of his trips (as well as those of his staffers) here. All the one's listed were paid for by trade associations (read: lobbyists) and there's no real accounting for private out-of-pocket travel (it also hasn't been updated in a while), but it provides a pretty good picture of how the game is played