Posted on February 21st, 2006 by Gavin M.
Spencer, you’ll recall, is the Rove-backed wingnut candidate for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat — so wingnutty that his ooga-booga scary-scare attack ad features the famous plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch. Spencer surely enough has tweet-birds orbiting his head and dances howling with buckets on his feet.
Spencer (L, with fungoid angry-white-man-head growth on shoulder) with Swift-Boater John O’Neill
But how is this former mayor of Yonkers faring in the fund-raising department?
Local cash small for Spencer
By GLENN BLAIN
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: February 21, 2006)
The people who know former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer the best don’t seem to be handing over their money — at least in large numbers — to fund his campaign for U.S. Senate.
A check of Spencer’s most recent financial statement showed no donations from people living in Yonkers among the more than 200 itemized contributions contained in the report.
We’re stocked to the rafters with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion puns, and we expect them to last through Spencer’s campaign (which may in fact be short), so here’s another one: ‘John Spencer Jews Erosion’:
Only two contributions came from Westchester residents.
It’s actually really tempting to donate some money to the guy as sort of a pay-per-view deal — his candidacy is the best comedy value since the Alan Keyes Flying Circus, in ’04.
Spencer spokesman Christian Winthrop downplayed the lack of local contributors in the report, arguing that the bulk of the campaign’s donations came in amounts under $200, which do not have to be itemized under federal guidelines.
“He has received a lot of support from Yonkers and Westchester,” Winthrop said. “A lot of them were contributions that were under $200 that were not itemized.”
No doubt, sure. The sacks of pennies keep rolling in. Wait, Christian Winthrop… Christian Winthrop… Oh, THAT guy — the Pilgrimy-named political hack who was skulking around Rhode Island a few years ago:
The race in the 1st Congressional District turned nasty yesterday, when Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy called a radio talk show to suggest that his opponent’s campaign worker had concocted a story about the lug nuts being loosened on the candidate’s car.
Kennedy, a four-term incumbent, called the John DePetro Show on WHJJ, while his Republican opponent David W. Rogers was being interviewed on the air. Rogers reported to the police last week that the lug nuts on his car had been loosened, as part of a rash of vandalism that allegedly hit his campaign staff.
Kennedy went on the air yesterday, suggesting that the entire episode was made up by Rogers’s political director, Christian Winthrop.
Kennedy said he spoke to three of Winthrop’s friends who told the congressman that Winthrop had told a similar story during the 2000 election, while working for Democrat Richard Licht’s U.S. Senate campaign.
“The implication is that he has done it as a publicity stunt. I hope that’s not the case for any of our sake,” Kennedy said. “. . . I’ve talked to three separate friends of Christian Winthrop who all said to me he made this up.”
Do it again, Chris! We’ve set up a Google News alert for ‘John Spencer” + ‘lug nuts.’
