Dear Jonathan,
The Associated Press today reported on an official Kerry campaign/ Democratic National Committee election guide that instructs Democrats to make up charges of voter intimidation even if no signs or evidence of voter intimidation actually exist.
This document proves the Kerry Campaign and the DNC are more interested in scaring minority voters than in working to reach out to them on Election Day, even if it means completely making things up.
And late today we received reports that Americas Coming Together (ACT)-a group working to get John Kerry elected-is distributing flyers in Missouri featuring an old photo of a civil rights marcher getting hit with water from a fire hose, presumably in Selma, Alabama, and claiming Republicans are trying to suppress minority voters.
This gross behavior is demonstrably false and it is unacceptable conduct.
But this is the environment John Kerry and Terry McAuliffe create.
The Kerry Campaign and the DNC are instructing Democrats around the country to make charges they know to be false, and to manipulate the media into printing and repeating the false charges in newspapers around the country.
Republicans have worked hard to reach out and bring the President's message of hope and optimism to all Americans, including minority voters around the country. John Kerry sees these efforts, is concerned by them and is now working to scare those voters with lies and wholesale fabrications.
Every day Americans are witness to more and more proof that Democrats are the Party of protest and pessimism, providing a sharp contrast to our Party's action and optimism.
They can't win with their candidates and they can't win on the issues, so they stoop to an all-time-low that is unbecoming of Presidential politics.
That's why our Party is growing while their Party is shrinking. And that's why they will lose in November.
Sincerely,
― sometimes i like to pretend i am very small and warm (ex machina), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 05:29 (twenty-one years ago)
October 19, 2004
Court-Sealed Divorce Papers Emerge During an Upstate Congressional Race
ASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (AP) - A member of the New York State Legislature who is running for Congress pulled two shotguns on his wife at a dinner party in 1994 and threatened to shoot her, according to her divorce complaint.
John R. Kuhl Jr., a Republican and Conservative of Hammondsport, N.Y., and his ex-wife, Jennifer Kuhl-Peterson, issued a statement on Friday calling the disclosure of material from the court-sealed papers "ugly politics." Authorities in Steuben County are investigating the release of the papers.
Mr. Kuhl, 61, is running against Samara Barend, 27, a Democrat and community activist in Corning, N.Y., for the 29th Congressional District seat being vacated by Amo Houghton, 78, a Republican who is retiring after serving nine terms in the House.
Ms. Barend, formerly an aide to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, grew up in Vestal, N.Y., received degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, and moved into the 29th District last year. Ms. Barend is executive director of Minds of Steel, a nonprofit organization focused on exercise and mental health. Her campaign has denied having anything to do with the release of the divorce records.
Mr. Kuhl and Ms. Kuhl-Peterson said in their joint statement on Friday, "We're tired of every illegal, desperate attempt to exploit our family's privacy in the name of politics."
Details from the divorce papers first appeared on rawstory.com, a Web site that describes itself as "an alternative news directory to provide interesting and relevant news stories of interest to the left-leaning market."
In the papers, Ms. Kuhl-Peterson asked for a divorce on grounds of cruel and inhuman treatment. Mr. Kuhl, first elected to the State Senate in 1986, later countercharged, accusing her of abandonment.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the court-stamped papers and verified their accuracy. Mr. Kuhl and Ms. Kuhl-Peterson each declined requests by the A.P. to address the contents of the papers.
"In or about 1994, while the parties were hosting a dinner party at their home, the defendant (Kuhl) took out two shotguns and threatened to shoot plaintiff (Kuhl-Peterson)," the papers say.
Ms. Kuhl-Peterson filed for divorce in late 1998, charging that Mr. Kuhl had endangered her "mental and physical well-being and rendered it unsafe and improper for the parties to continue to reside together." The divorce was completed in 2000 in an agreement that allowed Mr. Kuhl to keep the house and directed him to make two financial payments to his wife.
After Mr. Kuhl was arrested in 1997 for drunken driving, he refused Ms. Kuhl-Peterson's requests "to attend counseling to deal with his excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages," she said in the papers. As a result of that arrest, Mr. Kuhl had his driver's license suspended for six months. He began his Congressional campaign bid by publicly discussing the arrest.
― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 05:49 (twenty-one years ago)