Nearly anyone and everyone involved in the recent CD8 Special Election between Republican Jesse Kelly and Ron Barber had a strange encounter with a Martha McSally supporter during the campaign.
McSally, who lost in the Republican Primary to Kelly, was reportedly telling anyone who would listen that they should not vote for Kelly, but wait for Barber to win, and then she would challenge Barber in the CD2 General election.
Now, the website Politico, is reporting on a strange encounter with McSally’s campaign manager Sam Stone. This comes as no surprise to many; they say that if you haven’t had a strange encounter with Stone, you probably haven’t met him.
In the Politico story, Stone says “I had zero actual data on the Kelly/Barber race. The [National Republican Congressional Committee] and Kelly’s team were certainly not about to share information with a rival, and we didn’t do any polling of our own.” However, shortly before the election, Stone was telling attendees at a grand opening of a senatorial campaign’s headquarters in Tucson, that he knew of data and that data showed Barber well ahead.
From Politico:
A Ron Barber staffer’s strange encounter with GOP aide
In the waning days of last week’s hard-fought Arizona special election, Democrat Ron Barber’s aides said they received some unsolicited advice from an unexpected source: the campaign of a Republican who covets the House seat Barber will soon be sworn into.
On the Thursday before the election, a top aide to Republican Martha McSally, a retired Air Force officer and a tea party favorite, approached a Barber aide at an event on the University of Arizona’s Tucson campus. That’s when something strange happened, according to the Barber campaign: The McSally aide, spokesman Sam Stone, offered the 22-year-old Barber staffer advice on how to beat Jesse Kelly, the GOP nominee who was running against Barber in the special election.
Stone had plenty of reason to want Barber to win: His boss, McSally, is a candidate for the Southern Arizona seat in the regularly scheduled November election. Had Kelly defeated Barber, it would have all but ended McSally’s hope of winning the seat because she would have had to run against an incumbent Republican. A Kelly loss, on the other hand, would have made her the odds-on favorite to rival Barber in the fall.
Barber and Kelly were competing for the seat of former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who resigned in January to focus on her recovery following the 2011 assassination attempt that nearly took her life. Barber, a 66-year-old former Giffords staffer, was injured in the attack.
Stone offered the Barber staffer his business card, which on the back had the following hand-written suggestions: Focus on social issues during the race’s final days in order to win the support of still-undecided independent and Republican women…….. to read more, visit Politico.
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