Friday, March 17, 2006

Is brianisaliar.com Next

San Diego Politics continues to do an outstanding job reporting on the CA-50 congressional race. On Tuesday, San Diego Politics posted about howardisaliar.com, a website devoted to debunking candidate Howard Kaloogian’s claims that he was a major force in the Gray Davis recall movement. Kaloogian’s campaign has responded that howardisaliar.com is a liar, nana nana nana.

[Kaloogian operatives] stated that the allegations [on howardisalair.com] were not only false (they claim that Kaloogian’s recall committee was the first to file with the Secretary of State of California and the first to register an online website that collected "several hundred thousand signatures on recall petitions") but that the anti-Kaloogian website was being run by operatives associated with Brian Bilbray’s congressional campaign without any proper attribution to the campaign.

So, the Kaloogian campaign claims that rival Republican candidate Brian Bilbray is behind the howardisalair.com website and that his campaign’s involvement with the site is a violation of Federal Election Commission rules.

The allegations made by these Kaloogian staffers about the howardisaliar website are relevant because the website in question contains no identification that it is sponsored by or approved by Brian Bilbray’s campaign. Therefore, the Kaloogian campaign staffers argue, Brian Bilbray’s campaign has not only engaged in dirty politics, but the Bilbray campaign has also done so in violation of FEC regulations.

Whoops. The Kaloogian forces have some pretty compelling circumstantial evidence that links not only Bilbray’s campaign to the website, but also Congressman Darrell Issa (CA-49), who has endorsed Bilbray and who was deeply involved with the Gray Davis recall.

Apparently the recall campaign engendered bad blood between the Issa recall committee and Kaloogian’s recall committee. A story by Dan Smith of the Sacramento Bee confirms this rift. Issa’s consultant was at the time, and apparently still is, Republican strategist Dave Gilliard. According to the Flash Report, Gilliard is now serving as the consultant for Brian Bilbray’s congressional campaign.

There is a lot more detail at San Diego Politics. Including an electronic smoking gun that links howardisaliar.com to the same Internet servers as the Bilbray campaign website.

It appears that North County Republicans are having a lot of trouble playing nice together.