June 7, 2008 was a great day for Ed O’Reilly. That was the day Ed got enough votes at the Mass. Dem. Convention to get on the ballot. I’m sure after that moment of glory, Ed would be quick to start demanding some debates with the incumbent. Right? Ah, not quite.
UPDATE: Ed did call for debates on June 10th, although at that point, the number was ten. Lau said he wanted to wait until the Senate session was complete in early August. He went on to say:
In particular, Lau didn’t want to negotiate the debate schedule through the media.
“Our campaigns can talk about specifics,” Lau said.
In an e-mailed statement later in the day, Lau added that the Kerry campaign would discuss debates with the O’Reilly camp once the Senate has finished its business for the summer, as early as August.
“We look to a thoughtful discussion about debates once the Senate has finished the business of this session,” Lau wrote.
Ed waited nearly two months before doing so. July 25th, to be exact. O’Reilly called for 14 debates announced in the press on July 28th.
It was at this moment that O’Reilly decided to really play games, because one has to assume he didn’t even have a campaign manager. So instead of admitting it, this was his response, and what has continued to have been his response going forward:
“I want a response from Sen. Kerry, not from a surrogate,” O’Reilly said. “I didn’t send (the letter) to Roger Lau. He’s not on the September ballot.”
O’Reilly, who is challenging Kerry (D-Boston) by running to his left, challenged Kerry to a series of debates in a letter on July 25. Kerry has yet to respond to the request.
In an appearance Tuesday on NECN’s “NewsNight,” O’Reilly charged that Kerry‘s unwillingness to debate him is an affront to both him and Massachusetts voters.
“It’s not just an insult to me that I haven’t gotten a response from John Kerry, really it’s an insult to the people of Massachusetts and also to the Democratic process,” O’Reilly said. “John Kerry should let me know…I’ll do any number of debates he’d like to do.”
Note that he only refers to John Kerry, not the Kerry campaign. That’s because he has heard from the Kerry campaign numerous times, but not a personal call from the Senator, apparently.
Finally, the Kerry campaign had had it, and gave it to Ed O’Reilly’s clowning around:
“You know this fella’s blatant lies are getting as old as his campaign is desperate,” Brigid O’Rourke, a spokeswoman for Kerry (D-Boston), told PolitickerMA.com.
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O’Rourke said O’Reilly’s charge is simply not true and that it has been O’Reilly, not Kerry, that has been dragging his feet in organizing the debate.
“Our campaign did respond to his campaign – within days,” O’Rourke said. “It took them over a week to get back to use with another list of demands.”
“As we told Mr. O’Reilly weeks ago,” she went on, “our campaign manager is happy to sit down with his campaign manager to talk details.”
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“We’d like to have a conversation rather than litigating this through the media in a cheap ploy for attention,” O’Rourke said. “But every day that this character invokes the smears of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and channels the Massachusetts GOP in his personal attacks, you wonder more and more whether his campaign is based on anything but character assassination.”
Actually, I think Ms. O’Rourke is being too charitable to Ed O’Reilly. He is too inept and amateur for “character assassination”. He hasn’t even been able to produce a campaign manager, since his last one left and threw his support to John Kerry.
So, in light of this pretty clear record of the shenanigans Ed has been pulling, is today’s news any surprise? I didn’t think so.
The obvious point is Senators don’t schedule their own debates. Ed knows this. God, I hope he knows this. So clearly, he does not want a debate scheduled; otherwise, he would have talked to Roger Lau right away, to get that process underway. Better yet, he should have gotten the ball rolling in June. But he didn’t do any of that. And that is why nothing has happened. By design, of course.
Update 2
Ed O’Reilly’s “representative” and Roger Lau are finally going to meet on Friday:
Roger Lau, Kerry’s campaign manager, plans to sit down with an O’Reilly representative this Friday.
Again, why didn’t Ed do this earlier? Oh, because he was enjoying milking the “debate about the debates” in the press.
I already pointed this out to you so I don’t know why you would re-post the same false info.
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p>Here is the Gloucester Times article in which O’Reilly called for debates on June 10th.
the fact that he STILL won’t negotiate with Roger Lau.
but I presume you will not update it as you are not concerned about the truth, just doing damage control for the Kerry campaign
I had not seen that article before. So the diary is now accurate.
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p>Also:
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p>And:
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p>You added the correct info, but the incorrect info is still there. Most people put lines through them showing that the certain info is incorrect. You can do that with the “< del >” tags.
to have well researched diaries that reflect the truth as far as I can take it. I don’t do “damage control” for anyone. And I told you this is a theory of mine. The conventional wisdom is that challengers want debates. I am skeptical that O’Reilly does, and the new information shows that O’Reilly changed tactics by July. In June he said this:
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p>Lau was kosher in June. Not so in July/August. Why is that?
campaign – he justsaid it to the reporter.
Wish I had, so I didn’t have so many cross outs in the diary. My theory still holds, and O’Reilly’s behavior is that much more perplexing, since he was all at peace with it all in June. Not sure what happened between June and July that he decided he would no longer talk to Lau ….
but who knows?
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p>If your theory is correct and Ed’s ‘guilty’ per say, he’d need a motive to be convicted (or is that just on Law and Order?). What’s Ed’s motive? Why would he not want to have a debate? Kerry making a huge mistake at a debate is probably the only chance EOR would have of getting past 40%, never mind winning it, so I fail to see why he wouldn’t want to have a debate.
i do wonder what could have possibly made his campaign manager quit and throw his support to the former adversary.
If that’s the cause, wouldn’t he technically be innocent due to being mentaly incompetent? (I’m trying to stick with the law and order metaphor =p)
the only crime he has ALLEGEDLY committed is against his own best campaign interests. can you plead mentally incompetent to yourself? i’ll try, and get back to you on that.
I actually think this happens all the time: People being locked up because they’re a danger to themselves…
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p>I don’t think EOR’s there, which is why I’d like to hear some other proposed motives, but I’m certainly game for some more fun with corney law-and-order metaphors.
but, please, just toss out a few ideas. I’m sure you can come up with someone. Otherwise, it’s just that much harder to by this diary’s thesis.
It is clear that O’Reilly is either highly disorganized or he things throwing a temper tantrum will lead to Kerry personally stting up the debates. The longer this goes on the less likely there are debates.
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p>The fact is that in his proofessional career, I bet O’Reilly would have not conceded the point in a civil case if his clients’ “opponent” said that because he was representing himself, his client shouldn’t be able to use his services. It is a the campaign manager’s role to set debates up. Kerry has a campaign manager.
then he could just sit down with Lau himself. He seemed ready to do that in June per the article Paul provided, yet now he will only talk to “John Kerry”.
i don’t get why the numbers of debates he wanted ballooned with every successive request and with each waning month. doesn’t make sense.
What on earth is causing the delay in arranging a few debates? If O’Reilly’s people are causing the delay, let’s hear exactly, specifically what they refuse to accept. If the reverse, same request.
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p>Honestly, this is the U.S. Senate we’re talking about, not a tie breaker in women’s gymnastics. The people have the right to see their candidates debate the issues.
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p>I’ll go with procedural issues until Labor Day.
…about “exactly, specifically what they [EOR’s campaign] refuse to accept” from the Kerry camp is because Kerry’s people have repeatedly said they don’t want to “debate the debates” in the media. O’Reilly appears to be making unreasonable demands in the media – and it’s great free press for him. If he was truly interested in debating Kerry, he would have responded to Roger Lau and negotiated weeks ago.
The 10, 14, and 23. Reading the Gloucester Daily Times article, O’Reilly wants 7 – 10 debates plus a town meeting in each county. Massachusetts has 14 counties. Could the different numbers be the result of sometimes distinguishing and sometimes conflating debates and joint appearances?
often counted as a debate? It was in various Presidential campaigns. Beyond any debate agreed too, why would Kerry agree to joint appearances. These candidates are not of equal stature and they have very different abilities to draw crowds.
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p>Frankly, I’ve followed politics for over 40 years and I can thing of no case where two such mismatched candidates had a combination of 21 to 28 debates and “joint appearances”.
Beachmom, your “theory” is clearly detached from reality.
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p>What did the Senatorsay himself, just yesterday on TV, when asked if he would debate?
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p>“Not neccesarily, no. We have time issues and schedule issues.”
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p>Take it or leave it, but all those who watched that segment knows whats going on.
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p>ps. I give you credit for updating your journal. You’re a step above that potty-mouth Brigid O’Rourke and I think you should replace her as spokeswoman.
And it’s part of why I wrote the diary (plus if you look, I linked to that news at the end of my diary). I think Ed needs to re-think his strategy if he really wants a debate; otherwise his intentions don’t look that pure to me.
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p>As to Ms. O’Rourke, I don’t think that was called for, Z.
Because she truthfully spoke of O’Reilly’s repeating SBVT charges? Shouldn’t it make any difference that O’Reilly clearly stepped over the lien and tried to pretend he was John O’Neil?
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p>When he could have backed away from saying in the Boston Globe that Kerry needs to disprove the SBVT charges, here is whathe wrote on Daily Kos.
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p>”All John Kerry needs to do is release his original discharge papers showing whether or not he was honorably discharged or was given a general discharge. It is really that simple. Once he produces the honorable discharge at the time of his discharge, together with the “exit interview”, all of this will be past us.
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p>Since John Kerry now has the portfolio and all of the t’s are crossed and the i’s dotted, I assume John Kerry now has that documentation. He should just show it and end this issue and move on. We don’t need more division.
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p>As I said, credibility is at issue and I want John Kerry to take the high road and show his crediblity and show the Honorable Discharge Papers he must now have.”
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p>http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
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p>The fact is Kerry’s records were on his 2004 website and stayed there for at least a year. There was never a problem with them. (Kerry was the most prominent and effective anti-war vet had there been any negative action, it would have been news worthy.)
I don’t see why Senator Kerry shoulde debate Ed O’Reilly…O’Reilly hasn’t demonstrated much in the way ogf fundraising, grass-roots support or anything at all since the convention. The whole PUMA phenom (such as it is) is pretty much the whole ball game as far as Ed is concerned. So my idea is this, forget Ed, John Kerry should just cut to the chase and debate Senator Clinton, SHE at least has some standing with Massachusetts democrats based on her margin in the primary.
Remind me what the PUMA thing was…
…or Party Unity My Ass. They’re a group of folks who call themselves Democrats, but who say they will support McCain if Clinton isn’t the Dem nominee. Their leader, Darragh Murphy (of Massachusetts) donated $500 to McCain in the 2000 election cycle, so take their word for what it appears to be worth…
If it walks like a chicken and talks like a chicken, it’s a chicken!
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p>If Senator Kerry wanted to debate his worthy opponent, whom 1 in 4 delegates supported at the state convention, there would have been debates already.
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p>His refusal to participate in the democratic process has helped me decide to vote for Ed O’Reilly.