Eric Fehrnstrom’s email to the Boston Globe, emphasis mine:
“It was my Twitter acccount,” the aide said in an email to the Globe. “Sometimes we take our politics too seriously and this was my way of lightening things up. As they say in politics, if you can’t stand the tweet, get out of the kitchen.” Neither Brown’s campaign manager nor his US Senate communications director responded to a request for comment on Fehrnstrom’s actions.
Well, I guess my post was read by a few more people than I expected. Sorry about that, Eric! I never expected Fehrnstrom would have been pushed to admit his involvement to the Boston Globe. But now that he has, he’s dug himself even deeper.
He says that the @CrazyKhazei account that mocked Alan Khazei and called him crazy among other things was his way of lightening things up. Last time I checked, slinging mud doesn’t lighten the mood.
Fehrnstrom’s trying to pass this off as a joke. It’s not a joke. It’s part of Brown’s campaign strategy – to the point that two of his top campaign contractors coordinated on it. As pointed out by BMGer kloechner earlier today, CrazyKhazei.com was registered in January by Rob Willington who works with Swiftcurrent Strategies and his own Willington Media. Willington got a lot of credit for Brown’s win in 2010 – take this RMG post for example.
Eric Fehrnstrom’s Shawmut Group has been paid $60,000 by the Brown Campaign this year. Willington Media has received $21,000. That’s a lot of money. Being two high paid Brown consultants, I would imagine Rob Willington and Eric Fehrnstrom communicate from time to time. That’s not much of a stretch. Since Fehrnstrom has admitted to being the @CrazyKhazei account, and Whois records indicate Willington registered CrazyKhazei.com (and KrazyKhazei.com, just in case!) I’d say this was part of Brown’s campaign strategy.
Willington specializes in fundraising attack microsites among many other things – for a sampling, just check out some other sites he has hosted on the same server: johntyranny.com is a one-page attack on Cong. John Tierney, and retirebarney.com is a similar page against Cong. Frank. Willington has also registered ReadySettiGo.com, SettiMayorPothole.com, and SettiSpeaks.com in addition to CrazyKhazei.com and KrazyKhazei.com that I can find.
For confirmation on this, I point you to the following Tweet by Jordan Gehrke, most recently of the Sharon Angle campaign, but also Tim Cahill and a former member of Scott Brown’s “New Media Team” – he’s in the picture on the RMG post I linked to above with Rob Willington.
“In fact, if I’m the Brown campaign, I release a Khazei microsite right now. #mapoli #bringthecrazy” 24 Aug via Web
I don’t think Gehrke is still affiliated with Brown, but it does show you another glimpse into the culture of Brown’s 2010 New Media Team. Could much have changed?
I think it’s a safe bet that Brown’s planning to use the same negative tactics to fundraise off of. I think it’s safe to say that with two of his top paid consultants involved, it’s a campaign strategy. I think it’s safe to say that it’s time for Scott Brown to explain himself. He railed against negative campaigning in his own race, in the 10th Congressional race last year, and this year, too, but now he’s engaged in it.
It’s time for Scott Brown to come forward and apologize to Alan Khazei and explain why he’s desperate enough to be going negative 15 months out. Might be good to distance himself from Fehrnstrom, too…
BMG is read by thousands of people, many of them with political or media or blog connections – remember the results of EW posting her “coming home” post on BMG? Great work outing the Snark Campaign!
hit and run websites and sophomoric jokes.
we’ve got our own sites (I mean, this in the midst of Bobblehead Brown) but a) it’s NOT an official campaign from any of the Dems themselves and b) it starts with Brown’s ACTUAL votes and makes a policy point, albeit with a lot of snark.
There’s a line crossed with the @CrazyKhazei thing, and being on the other side of it is starkly embarrassing. Especially looking like it was sanctioned by an actual official staff member (or two).
(Although I can thank this whole thing on finally getting me to learn how to spell Khazei – I swear, every single time I’ve ever written about him I have to look up the last few letters of his name to be sure.)
from having people – including newscasters who should know better – finally learn how to pronounce his name. Yes, it really does rhyme with “crazy.”
with that idiot response. I was hoping that he would deny it, that would have been great, but this is the second best thing he could have done.
No one is going to confuse Fehrnstrom with Lenny Bruce, that’s what he took hours hiding from the media to come up with? Hears the deal Eric you are in the inner circle of people in the Brown campaign, you created a sock puppet account attacking crudely other candidates.
You didn’t offer social commentary about politics, you attacked the OTHER candidates, but you made a dumb mistake in posting and got caught. That’s the deal.
Brown’s decision is whether or not to keep you given that you have now tied his campaign to one of dirty tricks and negative attacks.
Mitt’s got enough problems already and the national blogs are going to feast on some of your posts, but that’s a post for another day.
Thanks for keeping this story alive, asshat.
n/t
But also the rest of the field, which he inappropriately smeared and unprofessionally derided. Bob Massie, Setti Warren, (assuming she runs) Elizabeth Warren, and the rest all deserve respect in the tradition of Massachusetts politics.
…to set up an anonymous twitter account and do a few fun things with it. There are plenty of those. And it’s not all that surprising to any of us that Brown had some supporter behind CrazyKhazei.
What’s truly surprising is that it rose to the level of a top aid. And that this top aid stooped to “gay video” jokes, tweeking local reporters, and making digs against other candidates that could easily come back and bite him in the butt.
He’s now going to try to play the “harmless little fun” card (seriously, harmless fun… he called an anti-bullying video “gay”?) because the guy who was attempting to inoculate Scott Brown from negative campaigning got caught doing just that.
There is also the irony of the Shawmut Group offering “New Media Consulting“. Maybe Fehrnstrom should take his own company up on its services.
Does Sen. Scott Brown think the tweets were funny? Does he think Fehrnstrom “lightened the mood”? If not, what will Sen. Brown do about this? Fire Fehrnstrom? (prob not) Reprimand Fehrnstrom? Make him apologize?
At least will he condemn the negative campaigning? At the very least make a generic statement that “mud slinging has not place in this campaign”? At the very very very least, will Sen Brown make Fehrnstrom take down the CrazyKhazei account and make Willington give up the mocking websites?
If Sen. Brown doesn’t at least make his consultants give up these mud slinging vehicles, and he continues to pay them, then I don’t see how anyone can think that he is not (at the very least, indirectly) supporting negative campaigning.
Even if Sen. Brown had no knowledge of any of this before, now he does. So what will he do going forward?