Now that Eric Fehrnstrom has been unmasked as the source of politically incorrect tweets about Senator Scott Brown’s potential Democratic rival, Alan Khazai, he has ascended to membership in the dubious pantheon of renowned dirty tricksters.
Fehrnstrom, the brains behind the morphing John F. Kennedy to Scott Brown video, believed to be the flashpoint for Brown’s upset of Martha Coakley in the 2010, not only has the title of senior campaign advisor for Brown, but, also, doubles as a top aide in the Mitt Romney entourage.
His elite status appears the only anomaly compared to fellow tacticians, Dick Tuck and Donald Segretti, both low level operatives/mudslingers of a bygone day when their targets were Richard Nixon and Edmund Muskie, respectively.
Tuck’s shenanigans involved embarrassing candidate Nixon during his run for the White House. In 1968, according to Wikipedia, Tuck ” utilized Republican nominee Nixon’s own campaign slogan against him; hiring a very pregnant African-American woman to wander around a Nixon rally in a predominantly white area wearing a T-shirt that said,”Nixon’s the One.”
Segretti, involved in the “dirty tricks” Watergate-era circa 1972, forged a letter, according to Wikipedia, “ascribed to Sen. Muskie (the early Democratic frontrunner) which maligned the people, language, and culture of French Canadians, causing him considerable headaches in denying the letter and dealing with the issue.” Muskie went on to lose the Iowa caucuses to George McGovern (the eventual nominee) and soon after withdrew from the race. The confusion and multitude of false accusations that Segrett’s ilk fomented in the campaign were considered part of Muskie’s downfall.
Perhaps thinking that Khazai represents the biggest challenge to Brown’s re-election, Fehrnstrom’s tweets have denigrated Khazai’s military service, sexuality, and his involvement in City Year, a service organization Khazai co-founded. After a month of these tasteless tweets under a CrazyKhazai account, Fehrnstrom made the mistake of releasing one of the salvos under his own Twitter account.
Brown disavowed any knowledge of his top advisor’s activities and promised no repeat, but Fehrnstrom remained ebullient, chalking up his antics as mere banter, adding that “if you can’t stand the tweet, get out of the kitchen.”
This time, though, Fehrnstrom’s behavior has gone over the pale and his comeuppance is the public knowledge that a political dirty trickster has been unveiled.