Calling roll: Senate race slip-up? Here!
2007-10-07
Source: Portland Press Herald
It's inevitable. Lob enough salvos over the Great Political Divide and sooner or later, one will blow up in your face.
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rss feedThe man with the freshly singed eyebrows is Mark Ellis, chairman of the Maine Republican Party. His intended target: Democratic Congressman Tom Allen.
For weeks, the state GOP and members of Sen. Susan Collins' staff have been diligently shopping a "hot tip" to members of the Maine media: Allen has missed a number of votes in recent weeks as he travels the country raising money for his effort to unseat Collins in 2008.
Their hook is that Collins, unlike Allen, has never, ever, missed a vote in her 11 years in Congress.
Problem was, the story didn't seem to be getting any traction. So last week, upon hearing that Allen had just missed three more votes, GOP Chairman Ellis fired off a press release titled "Tom Allen Skips Work Again."
Said Ellis, "Mainers deserve to know the answer to the question: Where was Tom?"
Within hours, that answer landed with a thud in the GOP's inbox: Allen was at the funeral of his cousin's wife in Bangor.
Can we say damage control?
A suddenly somber Ellis reacted thusly: "Without question, the most difficult times in our lives are those in which we grieve the loss of family and friends. Our thoughts are with Congressman Allen and his family during this difficult time."
Political whiplash aside, two points are worth making about this misfire.
First, before you publicly hammer someone with the question, "Where were you?" you'd best find out the answer in advance.
Secondly, this whole attendance thing -- sparked by Camp Collins' perception that perfect attendance does a perfect senator make -- is hardly the slam-dunk indictment Maine's GOP wants us to think it is.
According to The Washington Post, Allen has missed 29 of 938 votes in the 110th Congress -- giving him an absentee rate of 3.1 percent. Roughly 38 percent of his colleagues in the House have missed more votes, while 62 percent have missed 29 votes or fewer.
In other words, it's a stretch to say, as Ellis did before his about-face, that Allen "seems to have lost interest in showing up for work." (Two of the votes he missed this week, it turns out, were to name post offices in other states.)
The problem with this kind of sniping, of course, is that it detours everyone from the real issues in the race.
On the heels of the GOP's sympathy message, Maine's Democratic Party fired back Wednesday with its own statistical volley: Allen has cast more than 6,700 votes in the House since 1996 (for 98 percent attendance), almost double the number Collins has cast over the same period in the Senate.
What's more, state Democratic Party spokeswoman Carol Andrews noted that when Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker appeared recently before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Collins couldn't exit the hearing fast enough to run down the hall and keep her perfect attendance record intact.
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