Eric Massa seems to be learning about the difference between candidate and Congressman the hard way. When you're a candidate, the media's attention is divided between you and your opponent, and your opponent's supporters must concentrate on supporting him as well as attacking you.
As soon as the election's over, being the Congressman means that all attention is on you, for good or ill. Issues that might have escaped notice when you were a candidate will inevitably be discovered by local media or the other party.
The only viable strategy to deal with this reality is to get out in front of controversial news. When the media hears it first from one of your press releases, at least they don't think you're trying to hide something. And, more importantly, the first thing they internalize is your spin on the facts.
The Allen Stanford contribution is a good example. In general, making a big deal of old contributions from newly-outed crooks is a stupid ritual. That said, when the donation comes from a banker/swindler in the midst of a banking crisis, it's a ritual best initiated by the politician who took the money.
Charlie Rangel understands this, and he reported his intention to return donations from Stanford more than a week ago. Massa could have sent out a release indicating that he, too, planned to do the right thing after consulting with his lawyers. Now, as was the case with his decision to take corporate donations, it looks like he was trying to hide something.
Comments
Seems to me that no one squawked more loudly than Eric Massa about "dirty donations" to Randy Kuhl from people. And Randy Kuhl made the point often that a lot of the money Massa was taking from the tax-evading Chairman of the tax-writing Ways & Means Committee Rangel and his cronies was dirty (and obviously a lot of it was).
Good post Rottenchester, I couldn't agree with you more. You can't be accused of being a shill for Massa on this, that's for sure.