GOP Senate candidate Dan Winslow spent some time on Scott Brown’s campaign payroll, as you may recall. And now it appears that some of Brown’s penchant for saying silly things in public may have rubbed off. ThinkProgress caught Winslow in an amusing little gaffe where his claim to be a regular Joe didn’t hold up very well at all.
Here’s the Globe, reporting on a straw poll that was held this morning at the Danversport Yacht Club:
Winslow, the winner, slipped out of the Danversport Yacht Club before the votes were tallied, to spend the afternoon campaigning on the North Shore. But before he left, he said he thought the event sent the wrong message.
Winslow was absolutely desperate to dispel any impression that he and yacht clubs have ever had anything to do with each other.
“They gave us three minutes to speak today; three minutes is longer than I ever wanted to spend in a yacht club,” Winslow said. “I am not a tea and crumpets Republican. I am here because there are activists here. I am running a grassroots campaign.”
See? Dan’s a regular guy, just like you – he hates yachts, yacht clubs, and anything yacht-related.
Oh, except for serving as a director of the Pamet Harbor Yacht & Tennis Club, which Winslow listed on his 2011 Statement of Financial Interests.
#FAIL
The Danversport Yacht Club is everyone’s favorite place to take their mother to lunch: great food, good prices and pleasant staff. Add this to his using Lynn’s own Mashmallow Fluff as an insult and he’d best stay south of Boston!!
Attended a few Mother’s Day brunches and New Year’s Eve dinners there in my day. I don’t think he is a member but my uncle has his boat moored there in the off season and the rates aren’t that bad. Bad move Dan, next he will insult the Hilltop or the Continental-is nothing sacred?
…aside from being a “full-time” legislator. Also, it appears Winslow maybe able to share the pain of many, given that he has two mortgages on each of the two houses he owns and is paying high interest rates on them (one is 7%). No doubt Dan can not refinance them because they are underwater and banks won’t lend to him.
But he did have enough money in his piggy bank to dump $100,000 into his US Senate campaign, so no tears for Dan.
You don’t get it both ways. If the straw poll was that important to you, then don’t apologize. If you don’t want to seem like the “yacht club candidate” don’t go to one. This is very Brown-like…taking a minor optics mistake and turning it into a bigger deal by being greedy.
…was that three minutes is longer than he wants to spend in a yacht club, because he is usually in such a rush to get right out on the yachts.
I’ve been to Dem events at country clubs too. This is the venue the organizers chose and there is nothing inherently wrong with a yacht club. The article says tickets to this event were $10 so not like it was out of reach to most people.
Nobody would care, except that Dan made a big deal out of pointing out in his speech that he’s not a yacht club guy – and then it turns out that he not only is, he is actually a director of one. Ridiculous, self-inflicted, totally unnecessary damage.
He should buy a truck? Better make sure it’s a Chevy though, can’t be high falutin’ in a GMC
Get a barn coat too. And a daughter in American Idol.
http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/2013/03/american-idol-across-america-in-boston.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OffOnATangent+%28Off+On+A+Tangent%29
Going to something like the Danversport Yacht Club isn’t some exclusive 1%er kind of thing, there are lots of events there, for all different kinds of organizations. It’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but it’s almost like a step or two up from a Knights of Columbus.
Given that, I really don’t get the faux outrage at all… not only did it blow up in his face here, but absolutely, positively no one in the local area would have thought he was ‘out of touch’ for going to an event there.
Apparently, he missed the, ‘if you’re not on message, you’re off it,’ part of campaign school. He should have just shushed… but I’ll take the gaffe.
By criticizing Yacht Clubs and “Tea and Crumpet” republicans, Dan Winslow is acting like Brown and distancing himself from the Republican Party, and he is making headlines. To continue with Brown’s playbook, he will now double-down on his statement. He will say that there no conflict with being a board-member on a yacht club, because he was helping a friend. He will say that the GOP shouldn’t be holding their events at yacht clubs, however. They should hold their events at the VFW or the Knights of Columbus. Like Brown, Dan Winslow is showing himself to be a crafty politician.
Is just so strange to me. The guy just spews off half baked ideas, which makes the media love him. I get that. However, I don’t understand how no one is talking about how he was fired as Romney’s counsel or that they couldn’t get him back on the bench. They want an interesting Republican candidate, so they’re ignoring his real past.
You seem to know more about these situations than the rest of us … please do elaborate!
…via ThinkProgress and Rachel Maddow, who also posted his disclosure form.
That was such common knowledge at the time that I thought it was reported. Romney wanted Dan gone after about a week. They held onto him for over a year, but brought Mark Nielsen in from CT as the de facto counsel while they worked the Governor’s Council to get Dan back on the district court. They tried everything to get him back on, but by then he was just toxic. There was open subordination against him in the administration by very junior staff on up. He broke down and started having physical issues caused by the stress.