FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APRIL 7, 2010
CONTACT: TED O’MEARA
207.699.4401
ted@cutler2010.com
RELEASE: CUTLER SAYS REPUBLICAN USE OF PAID “TRACKER” MEANS MORE POLITICS AS USUAL FROM THE PARTIES THIS YEAR
PORTLAND, Maine – Independent candidate for Governor Eliot Cutler has written a letter to Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi and chair of the Republican Governors Association (RGA), regarding the RGA’s employment of a paid tracker to follow Cutler and other candidates and videotape their remarks. At a recent candidates’ forum, the young woman working for the RGA blatantly misrepresented herself to Cutler when he asked her who she was.
“While I realize that the RGA – or any other group – has every right to stalk candidates with a video camera, I have to confess that I find both the practice and this manner of doing so highly objectionable,” Cutler said. “Its only purpose – starting in March, no less – is to hopefully capture a few seconds of some ‘gotcha’ moment that can be used in a 30-second negative ad this fall.”
Cutler said that he attended a recent candidates’ forum in Skowhegan with Republican and Democratic candidates for governor. Before the candidates starting speaking, he introduced himself to a young woman at his table who told him that she worked at the deli counter in a supermarket in the Portland area and that she just happened to be in Augusta that day and decided go to Skowhegan to hear the candidates speak.
After she began videotaping his remarks, Cutler said he asked one of the other candidates who the woman was and was told that she worked for the RGA. Cutler said that he later learned that this same woman had been making repeated inquiries to his campaign office, saying she wanted to learn more about him and asking where he would be speaking.
In his letter to Barbour, Cutler said if the RGA was going to employ such people, they should at least be honest enough to say who they are and who is paying them when asked a direct question.
“We have a lot to talk about here in Maine, and I hope that this will be a campaign based on the ideas, experience, and vision that each candidate has for turning our state around,” Cutler said in his letter to Barbour. “Your party’s employment of a paid tracker at this early stage of the campaign – especially one who deliberately lies about who she is – unfortunately leads me to conclude that Maine voters are going to be treated this year to more of the same old slash and burn politics that has turned off so many people.”
Cutler also urged the Republican candidates for governor to “repudiate both this juvenile practice and the RGA’s dishonest approach to it.”
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE ORIGINAL LETTER HERE.