Democratic Officials Lining Up Behind Self-Proclaimed Tea Party Candidates

It looks like suburban Philadelphia Democrats are working hard to ensure that Republicans not only have to overcome the margin of error, but also the margin of fraud. Their first step is lining up self-proclaimed tea party type candidates to funnel off votes from Republican challengers.

I already mentioned the shenanigans in PA-7, and it’s amazing how slimy Democratic candidate Bryan Lentz and the local party leaders are trying to be by claiming that they have nothing to do with the third party candidate. In this age, you can’t hide.  Here are some of the names and titles of Democratic officials and activists who pushed Jim Schneller over the edge to get on the ballot released by PA2010:

• Colleen Guiney is the head of the Swarthmore, PA Democratic Committee.
• Joseph Gallagher is a Democratic Committeeman from Aston, PA.
• Timothy Willard is a former Lentz staffer who previously worked on his state house campaign.
• Nicholas Allred is an officer with the Swarthmore College Democrats – an organization that already backed the Democratic candidate.  (Election fraud – you can’t get started too early!)
• Democratic activists Rocco Polidoro and Arthur Manos signed petitions to get Lentz on the ballot and then turned around to collect signatures for the third party candidate.

Upon further research, PA2010’s editor added this startling fact about the (legal) fraud at work in this self-proclaimed tea party campaign:

With the exception of Schneller himself and one registered Republican, it seems that all of Schneller’s circulators were registered Democrats, and most of them can be tied to Lentz by far less than Six Degrees of Separation. At least five of those circulators also gathered signatures for Lentz. And as we noted from the beginning, one of them is Colleen Guiney, the volunteer who Lentz once called “the hardest worker on my campaign.”

I don’t know how Lentz’s campaign and the Democratic officials can keep a straight face while they issue denial after denial.

It’s worth noting that local tea party groups have asked Schneller to leave the race, and they are making clear that they in no way support his candidacy.

The Independence Hall Tea Party Association, the largest such group in the region, endorsed Meehan in the spring and asked Schneller last year to quit the race, said Teri Adams, a board member of the group’s political action committee. …

The Independence Hall group and the Delaware County Patriots sent Schneller a letter Wednesday asking him again to drop out of the race, or at least to withdraw the signatures that Lentz volunteers and supporters had gathered.

In the meantime, we’re dealing with it here in PA-8, too. Here are the (so far) announced names of Democratic officials pushing a candidate who attended a Tea Party Forum in January only to tell attendees that they suck for attending and suck for voting.

• Brian Caplan now works for the state Democratic Party and is a former staffer for Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy.
• Jessica Milinichik also now reportedly works for the state party, but she was with the Murphy campaign as recently as a few weeks ago.

The third party candidate is expected to pull voters away from the Republican candidate, though the Democrats, again, deny any involvement.  Unfortunately, our local tea party group hasn’t issued any statements about this kooky candidate, even though he got up and insulted them at their own event.  Hopefully, they will make it clear to their supporters that they aren’t backing his candidacy.

I had my first experience with dirty politics from Philadelphia-area Democrats in 2008 when MoveOn volunteers canvassed our neighborhood and destroyed all of the GOP signs they recognized.  Not only were the McCain signs in our yards cut, but the frames were pulled out of our lawns and bent beyond easy repair.  Fortunately for me, I had a stash of extra frames from another campaign that didn’t need as much help, so I set out to repair the ones on our block.  I expect the same kind of shenanigans this year.

I’m not opposed to third party candidates, but I am opposed to those who accept help from one party just to screw over another candidate when they have no intention of running a real campaign.