Reply #18: Hackett's a liar and he's got TV anchorman looks.What a fine main-

[Algorem]

stream media,Dem-trashing future he has!!1111!1

"...Ari Berman, The Nation: One thing that hasn’t come up so far is Paul
Hackett, who obviously you’ve helped in the past. Hackett says he will campaign for you but at the same time he’s leaking an opposition memo about you to the press; he’s bashed you on right-wing radio, and he, generally speaking, seems more concerned with becoming a martyr than in helping Democrats get elected. Do you think that he will campaign for you in places like southern Ohio and how important a role do you think he can play in helping you win?

Brown: I hear what Paul says, that he will support me. I hope that he does. I hope that he campaigns extensively around the state. I have no idea what he’s actually going to do. He’s made a major contribution, especially in the special election last year, helping, with a lot of others, to make Iraq…helping people to understand more about the Iraq war. I hope he continues that kind of education for Ohioans.

Terence Samuel, AOL.com: Can you comment on how that scenario’s played out and what it says about the party generally -- the Paul Hackett situation?

Brown: It says little about the party. It says that one candidate was thirty points behind in the polls and barely had enough money in the bank to meet his payroll, and had no endorsements, only had union and only about three elected officials that I know of and party leaders endorsements, and wasn’t able to put together a big Senate race. A Senate race in a big state is a very extraordinarily complicated machinery to put together, and Paul had never been in a big race before. He’d been in a congressional race, which is a sprint, where he got huge help from outside his district, outside the state, including from me. I sent an organizer down there to put his get-out-the-vote operation together and raise money for him, and so did others. In the Senate race, he was way more on his own and he had to go from a city council seat, or a village council, in a town of four or five or six thousand to city council, I guess, to run for the Senate is a step that is very, very difficult and I think that he came up against reality. But it says nothing about the party. The party was not involved. I had my allies. Henry Waxman called some of his Los Angeles contributors for me and said “Sherrod Brown is the real progressive in this race; I hope you help him.” I had people around the country whom I knew doing that, who were progressives, but there was no party leader involvement…Dean or Reid. So, the reality was just politics... "

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11274