On Sunday we ran an explosive post about why the DCCC dumped Hans Keirstead and endorsed Harley Rouda. Just for the record, I emailed Keirstead's campaign, told them I was writing the story and asked for a call so we could go over it before I published. The response was "I call you in a few minutes." Never did get the call so I ran the post Sunday and included Keirstead's press release. A few days ago the campaign was complaining they had been ill-treated.A little background: I think both candidates-- Harley and Hans-- would be absolutely dreadful members of Congress. Terrible combination of traits between the two: one's an "ex"-Republican, both were endorsed by the New Dems (the Republican wing of the Democratic Party) and neither seems committed to any progressive values or principles.Blue America endorsored Laura Oatman, who dropped out because of the huge sums of personal money the various candidates were using to self-finance their campaigns. And there's an even worse candidate running than either Hans or Harley: Omar Siddiqui, another "ex"-Republican who now claims to be "a Reagan Democrat" and who doesn't live in the district but decided to run there because he's such a big supporter of the very right-wing (and racist) incumbent Republican in the district he actually lives in. A dreadful mess in a district that should be a synch for a Democratic flip!Keirstead's campaign manager complained that the DCCC was using me, something I talked about in the post, which gave me a feeling he didn't actually read the post. In any case, he seems to think, since I published the DCCC smear against Hans, I should also publish another smear against Harley, which he graciously sent along, something along the lines of Rouda firing a woman because she had cancer and her health care bills were causing the company to be in a "downward death spiral" according to him. As I mentioned in the first post, neither of these tragically flawed candidates should have been recruited by the DCCC's imbecilic, right-wing local staffer, Kyle Layman. This whole thing is entirely his fault and the fault of whoever didn't fire him months ago when he started showing clear signs that he didn't have what it takes to do the job. Unfortunately, his boss, Jason Bresler, is even more of a moron-- and more of a threat to the Democratic Party. Ultimate responsibility? Nancy Pelosi, Stenchy Hoyer and Ben Ray Lujan.In any case, the Keirstead campaign's version of the story I ran Sunday is that the whistleblower was someone trying to ruin his life for his own (unrelated) reasons:
While Hans was a professor at UC Irvine and running a lab, a man who was suing his family for $5 million over a piece of artwork filed a complaint with UCI accusing Hans of various forms of misconduct. He did this in an attempt to discredit Hans and gain leverage in the lawsuit.UCI took the allegations seriously and funded an independent investigation. Hans fully cooperated, encouraged his students and lab employees to do the same. After months of interviews and conversations, the woman hired to conduct the investigation determined there was no wrongdoing and that all the claims were unfounded, not credible, or false. The man who accused Hans was forced to drop his other malicious lawsuit and signed a statement acknowledging the UCI complaint was false.The man was recorded on a voicemail stating:“You think, what I did to Keirstead is fucking near child’s play. And I’m not letting up on Keirstead one fucking bit. You have no idea.”
The DCCC acknowledged that this was part of what they based their decision on but claims it is incomplete and that Hans was still promising-- for over a month-- to get them proof "in two days" that he never punched out the woman and knocked her to the ground. He never provided them with the proof. These are the documents I got from Hans' campaign as proof that he's innocent of the DCCC changes they made when they threw him overboard. As I said, they should throw Kyle Layman and Jason Bresler overboard... as well as Hans and Harley.Click on the images to read the documents
