While reading Tim Craig's latest Washington Post article on Mark Warner weighing his options, I came across this gem:
...Virginia Republicans predict a bruising Senate campaign if Warner is in it."Mark Warner has got a record. He's got a legacy, and it's not all good," said GOP strategist Chris LaCivita, an adviser to Davis. "We will leave no stone unturned. Not one."
Rebecca Fisher, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, said, "Warner has never been challenged before. He hasn't faced ads on his record. He walked into the governor's mansion and he walked out."
So, Tom Davis has hired Chris LaCivita and Republicans are talking about running a nasty, negative campaign against Mark Warner next year? Coincidence? I think not! Here's a few career highlights for Chris LaCivita:
*"LaCivita was campaign manager for George Allen's successful US Senate race in 2000 against the incumbent Chuck Robb."
*"During the 2002 midterm elections, LaCivita was the political director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. LaCivita was the direct supervisor of James Tobin, another employee of the DCI Group. In 2005, Tobin was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison for his role in the 2002 NH phone jamming scandal for his activities during that campaign; LaCivita was on Tobin's witness list but never called. Democrats, who sought testimony from LaCivita for a civil suit tied to the same incident, recently settled that civil suit out of court."
*"During the 2004 US Presidential campaign, LaCivita was principal media advisor to the Swift Boat Veterans, writing & producing commercials for them."
*"During the 2006 US elections, he served as General Consultant for Republican George Allen's unsuccessful 2006 Senatorial campaign against Democrat Jim Webb."
*"Interviewed in March, 2007, LaCivita told reporters that the GOP could silence the press uproar over the sudden dismissal of eight US Attorneys by promoting stories about the most extreme among anti-Bush activists."
Quite a resume, huh? Swift Boats, a phone jamming scandal, the nasty 2000 and 2006 Virginia Senate elections, etc. So what does it say about Tom Davis that he has hired this guy? I hope somebody asks Davis - that is, if he has a few minutes when he's not busy trying to save his wife from increasingly certain defeat by Chap Petersen on November 6.
P.S. For more on the phone jamming scandal, see here.
Davis has to find that the perpetual non-partisan "cross-over" votes he has enjoyed since he was a county Supervisor over thirty years ago of some Democrats and independents is going to be at serious risk by just being associated with this kind of slime let alone an employer of him. We have our kids dying in foreign countries to protect our rights to vote and here is one of the world's experts at voter suppression and the use of LIES being hired by an otherwise generally respected public official. I always figured Davis for a lot smarter than Allen. This hiring proves he is cut from the same garbage as Allen as well as Rove and his team have to count on to win "at all costs" no matter whether things are based in truth or not. Differences of opinion on issues are one thing, Lies and manufactured BS are another.
We should put a whole quick response team together just to get ready to De-bunk and expose the inaccuracies, out right lies and distortions that are inevitable from "Mr Swiftboat". If he is one of those who come from the same school of thought that put his business associate in prison for a political dirty trick, then he has to understand that is a real option for him also when he starts the same crap.
Every time I see Mark Sickles I remember the voter suppression "dirty trick" they did to him last cycle when on the night before the election a similar republican group sent a robo-call into his district announcing that Mark had died and since it was too late to take him off the ballot to just go ahead and vote for the other guy.... These kinds of things are and should be felonies not the dirty tricks that they get a good laugh out of. This guy elevates these kinds of actions to an even higher level of slime.