Yesterday, we learned that an anonymous attack website was linked to Mitt Romney’s South Carolina’s consultants.
The Romney campaign has thrown one of their consultants under the bus for it:
Sources are telling FITSNews that Mitt Romney’s South Carolina campaign organization has fired consultant Wesley Donehue in an effort to make him the scapegoat for yesterday’s PR disaster.
FITSNews continues with:
Romney’s spokesman also says Donehue is “not an employee of ours,” yet Donehue’s “On The Mark” direct mail firm received $81,225.02 from the Romney campaign during the second quarter of 2007, according to Federal Election Commission filings
So he’s not staff of the campaign. But his firm is. And, according to Palmetto Scoop, another SC blog:
Donehue runs the daily operations of their political consulting firm, Tompkins, Thompson and Sullivan, including direct mail efforts and a number of Web-based ventures.
He’s in charge of web-based ventures… Well, the Scoop has some more details:
Under the Power Lines is the “NetRoots base” for their clients, which includes Romney, and is led by Donehue and associate Tim Cameron. They have done websites with a look similar to the “Phoney Fred” site for Reps. Nathan Ballentine and Keith Kelley as well as state senate candidates Scott Talley and Shane Massey.
The same group also runs A Daily Shot, a pro-Romney blog covering South Carolina politics that has been particularly critical of Thompson lately. Of the last five posts on the site – as of 9:30 P.M. Monday – four dealt with Thompson.
And an allegedly "Independent" pro-Romney grassroots website:
UPDATE: The New York Times notes that palMITTostate.com, Romney’s “volunteer” South Carolina grassroots Web site, is listed on the same account as Phoney Fred and Under the Power Lines.
So it sounds like these phony websites are a Romney modus operandi. And they threw a staffer, a deputy, under the bus when he was just executing company policy. Seems like there’s a little more accountability for this, doesn’t it?
3 Comments
FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog · September 11, 2007 at 6:58 PM
Mitt Romney Watch: The Phoneyfred.org Flap Part III – Who is Wesley Donehue?…
Remember that Flap asked the following:
Remember The Anti-Fred Thompson web site http://www.phoneyfred.org that Flap wrote about late last night?
And, Flap suggested that Mitt Romney and his campaign should condemn this activity and apologize for this blata…
The Right’s Field » Thompson Accuses Romney of "Cover-up" Over PhoneyFred · September 12, 2007 at 12:30 PM
[…] Soren Dayton elaborates on Donehue’s connections to the Romney campaign. While it’s technically true that Donehue is not on Romney’s payroll, his firm – for whom he runs “web-based ventures” — is. […]
eyeon08.com » Stock tactic: Sleazy bigoted phone calls · November 18, 2007 at 4:05 PM
[…] And, the Romney campaign has managed to include a number of practitioners of sleazy politics. Warren Tompkin’s, who is alleged to have attacked John McCain in 2000, is in charge of a firm that ran a sleazy website attacking Fred Thompson. Not to mention the faux-cop scandal, which eventually led to the firing of Jay Garrity, Romney’s long-time director of operations. As I said at the time of the PhoneyFred scandal: This is another in a long list of thuggery and illegality of Romney associates and campaign staff. Including Romney’s former Director of Operations Jay Garrity, Romney’s former national finance co-chair, Romney’s other indicted former national finance co-chair, etc. And then the Romney campaign threatens voters if they do things like ask questions (note that in South Carolina, the Romney campaign doesn’t even allow that) […]
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