Kucinich's exclusion from the AARP debate and what it shows about his campaign

rinsd

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Wed Sep-19-07 04:59 PM
Original message

Kucinich's exclusion from the AARP debate and what it shows about his campaign

Edited on Wed Sep-19-07 05:02 PM by rinsd

Dennis Kucinich sent out a huffy email about not being included in the debates that trekked tin foil BS.

From his own website and from one of his own supporters this was posted.

http://action.dennis4president.com/forum/posts/id_1232/

POSTED BY: cprice404 on 09/17/2007 11:48:13 < QUOTE >

As soon as I got the e-mail mentioning that Dennis had not been invited to participate in the AARP debate on Thursday, I started trying to contact the Iowa AARP to register my grievance.

I received a prompt reply from them and have had a bit more correspondence via e-mail since then. They have a very detailed account of their position, which is that they invited Rep. Kucinich to participate and detailed the steps he'd need to take to make him eligible, and that they hadn't received any response from the campaign until the article was published recently claiming that he was intentionally excluded. Given the lack of direction and assistance I've been able to get from the national campaign while trying to organize a local group and some events in support of Dennis, I can't say that I have any reason to believe that their version of events isn't accurate. I hope someone on this forum can convince me otherwise, but as of right now my perception is that the campaign failed to take the necessary steps to get Dennis included in the forum and then cried "foul" once they realized it was too late.

I have been an avid Kucinich supporter since '04 so I really hope I'm wrong, but right now I'm feeling pretty deflated. I'll paste the AARP correspondence below in case anyone wants to read it.

meantime,

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Chris,

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the participation of Dennis

Kucinich in the AARP/IPTV Forum that will be held on September 20 at the

Adler Theater in Davenport, Iowa.

On July 2, 2007, Rep. Kucinich's campaign was sent a registered letter

inviting him to participate in the event. The letter was accompanied by

criteria that were set by AARP and IPTV for participation in the forum.

Criteria include:

* Have filed an FEC Form F-2, "Statement of Candidacy," with the Federal

Election Commission;

* Have publicly announced an intention to run for the nomination of the

Republican or the Democratic Party for President of the United States;

* Have a Campaign Office inside the State of Iowa; and,

* Have employed at least one paid campaign staff representative to

perform full-time campaign duties in the State of Iowa on behalf of the

candidate since at least August 1, 2007.

During the weeks following his campaign's receipt of the letter of

invitation, Rep. Kucinich's office had no communication with AARP or

IPTV. The campaign did not acknowledge receipt of our invitation, nor

did he or any of his campaign staff indicate any interest in

participating in this forum. We did not hear from anyone about the forum

until a story appeared in the Quad-City Times stating incorrectly, that

Rep. Kucinich had not been invited to participate.

Rep. Kucinich did not meet all four of the stated criteria that would

enable him participate in the upcoming forum by the designated date.

Ann Black

AARP Iowa Communications

Looks like yet another campaign fuck up from a campaign that can't raise money on the internet where the campaign has excellent support and put their 2008 campaign website up (before they used the 2004 one) in July, 7 months after he declared.

How in the world can you not have a single staffer working IA?

Look at the comments of deflated Kucinich supporters who get no answers from the campaign.

Who is running the Kucinich campaign?