A former Coleen Rowley staffer tells all, but digs at the media too much.

A few weeks ago, FBI legal ethicist and anti-war crusader Coleen Rowley got thumped in her Congressional bid by a pro-war, pro-Bush neo-con -- U.S. Rep. John Kline, a career U.S. Marine.


And this, in Minnesota, a (mostly) Blue-ish State that in the same election voted the first black Muslim into Congress and Democrat Amy Klobuchar into the U.S. Senate!

Now, one of Rowley's right-hand volunteers dishes the dirt about what life was like at the helm of Rowley's sinking campaign ship:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_georgian_061204_the_day_the_coleen_r.htm

So what happened?

Well, lots of stuff.

Georgianne Nienebar writes eloquently about the frustration of working for a candidate so morally rigid, she apparently refused to ask for big money or launch self-defense / attack ads, even while the competition was aiming for Rowley's knees and jugular.

But she also cries sour grapes, blaming the press for "abdicating" its responsibilities by not doing the candidate's work for her and saving Rowley from the ogre's mouth. Since when was it the media's role to pick sides?

A selection from Nienebar's prose:

"How did we get here? We were flunking. ... There are five possible factors: the ideology of the electorate, the conduct of the Kline campaign, the conduct of the Rowley campaign, the inattention of the press and its abdication of its responsibilities as the Jeffersonian 'fourth estate' and the indifference of the DCCC under the leadership of Rahm Emanuel."

Well, yes and no.

CANDIDATES VS. POLITICIANS
Rather than mostly point her finger at her well-meaning candidate's weaknesses and campaign foibles, Nienebar's main argument seems to be that the opposition fought dirty and money talks. And yes, those are messages that are hard to deny.

But Rowley's flaws as a candidate and the oddities of her supporters played no small part in what even the liberal City Pages -- the Minnesota equivalent of the Village Voice -- dubbed "an inept campaign": http://citypages.com/databank/27/1354/article14882.asp

It's too bad. Rowley might have made a darn good politician. Her writings on her Web site alone are well worth the read. But by her own admission, she was not a strong candidate. And yes, there is a difference -- the difference between the policymaker and the vote-getter.

Who slipped a mickey to Rowley's debate coach, if she ever had one? Why save her best endorsements from Wesley Clark and the relatives of famed Sept. 11 heroes for last? Why didn't she obtain more money, sooner, to go on the television attack? And why were her last-minute television spots rambling attacks on Bush, that never mentioned Kline?: http://www.coleenrowley.com/Video_Pages/rowley_conversion_wm.html

Rather than accept the truth, Nienebar mistakenly rails at City Pages' "unchallenged, un-researched slam" and other supposed media failures.

Not even Rowley quite agrees. Wrote Rowley, in an online post responding to Nienebar's piece:

"I don't blame the media for my loss quite as much as Georgianne, my campaign volunteer, does. But it was unfortunately true that my GOP opponent was allowed to fly below the media radar and that he ducked most public debate in favor of launching his expensive negative attack ads."

...More on that in a moment.

NO BIG MONEY FROM PAPA DONKEY
But it's Nienebar's anger with the Democratic Party's national leaders that is probably the most eyebrow-raising part of her piece -- and the most relevant.

She explains that as the leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- the Democrat's fundraising arm -- Chicago Congressman Rahm Emanuel could have opened the spigot and fed the Rowley camp some badly needed dollars. Instead, after a summer spent warring with Howard Dean over the party's national strategy, the pitbull investment banker decided to fund only yes-men candidates that kissed the party ring.

In other words, candidates whom Emanuel thought could win.

This, according to Fortune Magazine: http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/17/magazines/fortune/politics.fortune/index.htm

And to her credit, rambling Rowley -- quirky, chaotic, hyperactive and unfiltered -- wouldn't know where to begin being a yes-man.

NASTY ADS
That left Rowley with no where to hide and no strong way to fight back when Kline blanketed his district with mailers, and a last-minute slew of negative TV ads got her in the rope-a-dope. Anyone who saw Kline's television spots during the last pre-election weekend got an eyeful. His campaign assailed her for supposedly betraying the troops, belitting soldiers, wanting to reinstate the draft, and morphing his image on her Web site into that of a Nazi.

The Kline camp barely stopped short of accusing Rowley of treason. And his message worked.

Of course, none of Kline's accusations were entirely accurate, and some may not have had any shred of truth to them at all. For instance, the "Nazi" image was actually that of the bumbling Colonel Klink -- who was never explicitly identified as a Nazi on 'Hogan's Heroes' -- and according to Rowley, the unfortunate makeover was not placed on her Web site by Rowley herself, as the Kline camp claimed, but by an overeager campaign volunteer, and then quickly removed.

MEDIA MAYHEM?
No matter. The damage was done. Should the media have gone out of its way during the last campaign weekend to help her recover?

Hardly. Once a campaign has stooped so low as to paste ridiculous pictures on its Web site, it was Rowley's responsibility to distance herself from such antics, discipline the wrong-doer, and take public steps to make sure such goofiness was never associated with her again.

When the shoe was on the other foot and his staffer got caught shouting racial obscenities, Kline did it:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:y3emS0gKim4J:www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/15568082.htm+%22John+Kline%22+AND+Meggen+Lindsay&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

Instead, Rowley appeared slow and hesistant to do any of those things, at least in public.

In fact, she sometimes seemed willing to capitalize on such hair-brained lunacy, but lamely, as if unsure whether it would work. The day after a small group of Rowley supporters and anti-war protestors were locked out of Kline's Burnsville office after attempting to barge in with a video camera, Rowley released a vague press release accusing the Kline camp of closing its door to constituents.

That's plain weird. And if her camp was fighting weird, she had to accept some fireballs from the Kline crew in return.

SLEEPING BEAUTY?
But in Nienebar's view, Rowley was a sleeping Snow White, almost too ethical for this world, but waiting in vain to be rescued by a handsome Prince Charming from the below-the-belt antics of the ogre-like Kline. And in this campaign fairy tale, the Prince Charming who "abdicated" his throne and his responsibility and let Rowley down was none other than the press.

By way of proof, Nienebar offers that Rowley failed to win the Pioneer Press endorsement, which was apparently authored by one of the PPress' conservative freelance columnists. Sorry, but the PPress has always been known as the more conservative of the metro area's two daily papers. That kind of treatment is to be expected. And Rowley did capture the editorial support of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and an endorsement from a large chain of suburban weeklies.

One Kline endorsement alone did not doom Rowley. And neither did the printed press.

And neither did the PPress. Rowley received at least mildly favorable coverage from the more conservative paper, here:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:U3FskPIYDfMJ:www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/15897387.htm+%22Frederick+Melo%22+AND+rowley&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

And here: http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:lWGJH5h0Z_kJ:www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/politics/15756760.htm+%22Frederick+Melo%22+AND+rowley&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

Meanwhile, Kline picked up some negative PPress coverage, here, and in the story mentioned earlier about the staffer's racist comments:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:2a-2_0mTdPQJ:www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/15656682.htm+%22John+Kline%22+AND+Frederick+Melo&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

So why did Rowley lose?

Maybe because it was a conservative district. Maybe because people knew of her, but not enough voters really knew her. And maybe her lack of television ads, her rambling and independent style, and her weak on-the-spot debating skills just doomed her from the start.