Tuesday September 16 2008
No Show Tom, Fake Schedule, Swiftboating, & the Keystone Kops
Or how Termed- Out State Senator Tom McClintock (R, Anywhere for a per Diem), who is running against Charlie Brown (D, Roseville ) posts a fake schedule on his official campaign website while his campaign workers set up an assault on Brown’s field director and the “press” acts like the White House press corps.
This was my day today.
1. 8 am Lincoln Area Chamber of Commerce Government Affairs Committee , Holiday Express Inn, Ferrari Ranch Rd, Lincoln
Tom McClintock, the guest speaker, is a NO SHOW. Instead, an aide, Mark Spannagel, says that Tom can’t be there because they passed the budget last night (??) After Spannagel’s spiel, and after the rest of the meeting, he comes up to me and says very sarcastically, “say hello to Todd.” I ask him if Tom McClintock is going to be at any other scheduled events that were shown on his website, since he skipped this one. He says he doesn’t know. I ask him again (politely, in front of Jennifer Perreira ) if Tom McClintock was going to be at anything as shown on his site schedule. He says that they’re “going to roll with it” but that he didn’t know.
2. The Surprise Super Secret “Managed” Press Conference. In Roseville, I call Todd. Does he know where Tom McClintock is going to be today? Yes. Supposedly there is a press conference downtown in Sacramento, at the Hyatt Regency at 12th and L street to announce that the budget has been passed, to start the campaign. They’re also announcing “something.” When is this? In a half hour. Do you want a camera there? Okay. On my way. I know what the Hyatt looks like. That’s where Dick Cheney comes to do photo opps. It’s across from the state Capitol building where Crazy Tom had his big ” BUILD THE WALL, DEPORT THEM ALL” sign up when he was calling for Federal funding to be cut off to San Franciso and Los Angeles during the budget impasse during the Minuteman “Get Your Hate on for Latinos” rally.
about 40 minutes later……
I ask at the entry where the McClintock press conference is, and they tell me upstairs. Then they don’t let me in the room. The room is being guarded by Mark Spannagel, (fancy that! he doesn’t look too thrilled to see me) and an unnamed male person I will have to call “SpannaCompanion”. Spannegel whips out a camera and takes my picture “for the file.” (“File?” They keep “files?” ) So I oblige and take his again for my notes. Nick P , Brown’s field director, is waiting outside the room. He’s been thrown out. Several other veterans have been thrown out. Where is Todd? He’s in the room. Can I go in the room? No. But I am supposed to be in there. No. Can I give my camera to somebody in the room who requested it. No. Who the hell IS in there? Todd and the press. Who else ? McClintock’s people. Is McClintock in there? Nobody knows.
What the heck. Take video camera out and start interviewing Nick P. What happened? McClintock’s campaign John Ruiz grabbed his arm suddenly and told him to leave? That he asked him to let go of his arm, and instead Ruiz started yelling at him, “Do you want to beat me up?” Nick said this, incredulously, in the way that someone does who just witnessed bat-chit crazy, and then added that he does not hit people. (Nick is a very mild mannered person. This is beyond ridiculous) How does he feel about being kicked out of the room? He wishes Democracy was a more open process. Pan around with the camera. Ask the door pugs Spannagel and SpannaCompanion what their names are, who do they work for, why are they doing this, and they both say NOTHING, get a “deer in the headlights look” and freeze up. After a while, the door opens and a few people go out and in. I start towards the door again and more people place themselves directly in front of me and block the open door. Holy crap. What the hell are they doing in there? I try to hold the camera up and TALLER PEOPLE come and put themselves in the doorway. I am only of average height. This one blonde woman must be at least 6 inches taller than I am.
Another Taller Male Person in a dark suit comes and puts his hand over the camera lens and tells me I am not allowed to film anything. I tell him I was asked by a person who is in the room to come. He tells me (hand still over my camera) that I am not allowed to film anything as this is private property, a private meeting, and that if I do not stop, I will be escorted out of the building. He also makes me identify myself but will not tell me who he is or who he works for. I ask him several times to please identify himself. He won’t. I take this to mean he must be private security or imitating it, and I’m not going anywhere with him if I can help it. This is creepy. What if I want to enter the room without filming? Are not other people in there taking notes? I can’t do that unless I go down to the office and ask permission. I am not on the list. I have to turn off the camera now. He is emphatic. I must turn off the camera now or leave. I press my thumb on the button and put my hand down.
I return to the opposite side of the hall with Nick and the veterans and wait for the room to open up. Eventually the room does open up, and Todd and the reporters come out. They interview Todd in the hall. I can tell by the issues and topics that Todd is speaking on, that whatever went on in the room must be complete ****ing bullshit. The one reporter for the SacBee also talks to one of the veterans and to Todd. We go downstairs and I then tell Nick P that one of the original door guards was Mark Spannagel, and that he was at Lincoln subbing for McClintock and refused to say where McClintock was going to be today.
3. The Auburn Rotary at the Elks Lodge, Pine Street, Auburn. When I had left the house that morning, I had no idea that I was going to be doing anything other than running an errand down to Lincoln and back, and then maybe sending an email of my notes and writing something. But now I’m all the way downtown, and it’s easier to get on the freeway and go straight up north to Auburn than to try to go home. So I head back to the parking garage, call my spouse, ask him to check McClintock’s website schedule to see if the next event is still listed, ask him to look at a map and tell me which exit, and head out of downtown Sac, back north towards the mountains. This is going to be a bit of a push, as I have about a half hour to try to get there by noon.
Once I find the Elks Lodge, I take a picture of the parking lot full of cars, and then walk uphill, and there’s Spannagel again, probably on lookout point. I take his picture in the doorway quickly as he’s trying to duck back out of the viewfinder. I enter the foyer. A person asks if he can help me, and I say I’m looking for Tom McClintock and ask if he’s going to be here today….. and the man says he thinks he might be here. Aha ! I peek in the doorway, and there’s Tom McClintock in the front of the room chock full of male Elks eating salads. The entire building smells like cooking lunch. I’m almost queasy after my previous encounter with “Friends” of Tom McClintock. The man asks if I wish to come in and sit down. Mindful of what happened the last time, I tell him I am following McClintock as a volunteer for the Brown campaign today, based on McClintock’s published schedule, tell him that McClintock was a no- show in Lincoln, and wouldn’t let me into a press conference in Sacramento, and ask if there is somebody to ask for permission. He goes and asks another person sitting in the room, who he identifies as an Elks official, and comes back and says very politely that perhaps it would be a good idea if I didn’t come in today, but I should come back next month when Charlie Brown is speaking, as today is “McClintock’s day.” This person was wearing a name tag and trying to be very diplomatic. I told him I was thinking of maybe waiting out on the sidewalk on public property a bit, IF that was okay with him, and he said it was. I did stay for the pledge of allegiance and the prayer, and I went ahead and snapped a photo from the doorway of McClintock sitting there in front of the roomful of Elks, having lunch, just after his campaign officials had used the Move America Forward people who specialize in Swiftboating pull up one of Rep. John Doolittle’s (R, not indicted yet) old fabricated dirty work and try to rumormonger a bunch of paid reporters in Sacramento. And had his flunkies refusing to say where he was going to appear. At least I had the damned camera there if they had tried to mug a veteran.
Hey, it’s a living for some people, right ? McClintock votes against veterans interests, and then pays people to stop bloggers who figured out who’s paying for their smear tactics against his opponent the veteran.
I then go to the Auburn office of Brown for Congress and update them on who’s in town and the other stuff his campaign has been doing today.
I go and eat some late lunch. I call my spouse, and tell him what’s up. He check McClintock’s site again.
4. And then I get back on the road and head up to the last stop, the alleged 4pm Lions Club meeting in Foresthill. That’s going to be about another half hour of mountain driving. At least it’s a beautiful drive and I know where I’m going, thanks to the Auburn office. I go to the Veterans Memorial Hall, a lovely big log lodge type building next to a park, where the Lions club meets, and there’s almost nobody there. Once in a while a vehicle comes in, but leaves soon. I take some pictures of the empty parking lot and park, and get back in the car. It’s time to go home. I stop at Wharton’s on the way back out, and other people stop as I rest, and admire the view of the Canyon. And then I drive the hour and 15 minutes home. My car had nearly 200 miles on it today.
People, my experience today is going to be just like a McClintock term in Congress. He’s beyond Doolittlesque.
____________________
cross posted at dailykos in a version I can’t edit right now. crossposted at progressive blue. photos by author.
this will start the photos, I will re arrange and add later
*
Mark Spannagel (McClintock aide) at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Sacramento Tuesday 9/16 Look how he thinks it’s funny that they’ve locked veterans out of the room and Brown campaign staff and volunteers , and he’s lied about the whereabouts of his boss
*
*
*
Tom McClintock in Auburn at the Elks Lodge eating lunch. That is one of the Holmes brothers next to him. (Auburn local government) His staff had just held a private press conference at the downtown Hyatt hotel, and thrown Brown campaign staff and volunteers and veterans out of the room. He also had hotel security prevent me from filming or assisting campaign staff while he had a known Swiftboating group passing out smears about Brown to the press.
*
*
This person bears a very close resemblance to the other McClintock aide who was there, and he was guarding the door with him. This was taken July 4 in Lincoln. On the float, Mr and Mrs McClintock, somebody else’s children, 4 flags, US, Christian, CA State Flag and GOP.
*
*
Locked Out. Afterwards, a SacBee reporter talks to some veterans and Todd Stenhouse of the Brown campaign