Is Ed Martin Trying to Commit Political Suicide?

Ed Martin is positioning himself at the front of the line for local extremists trying to destroy public transportation in the St. Louis region. Martin was one of the first people to follow the anti-transit group on Twitter, and yesterday he retweeted the following from Jim Durbin:

Durbin's post, unsurprisingly, is completely misinformed. Durbin claims that the public transportation ad is a "lie" because it says, "Some of us use it, all of us need it." He suggests that the money raised if Proposition A passes will only be used for expansion, and that Citizens for Better Transit is "lying" by suggesting that it's needed for Metro.

First of all, perhaps Durbin didn't notice, but the commercial run by CBT does not even mention the Proposition A campaign. So his suggestion that they're "lying" about the campaign is incoherent. But more importantly, Durbin does not even have the most basic understanding of what the stakes are for Proposition A. Metro had to cut funding last year after Proposition M did not pass. They were bailed out by the state and able to restore some (but not all) services, but they can't keep these services running unless their revenue is increased. The reality is that if Proposition A does not pass, Metro will have to make significant cuts in services, including light rail schedules, bus service, and call-a-ride. So I could perhaps say that Durbin is lying, but that would assume that he actually had some idea what he was talking about.

Back to Ed Martin. Why in the world would a candidate for office in the St. Louis region get behind a campaign that would cripple any future hope for quality public transportation in the city? I'm hopeful that Proposition A will pass, but who knows, maybe Martin, Durbin and other extremists will successfully misinform voters enough to beat the campaign. If so, any hope Martin had of running a competitive campaign will be completely ruined.

Why do I say this? Because just like last time, if funding is cut for public transportation, thousands of people will be left without ways to get to work. The elderly and disabled who rely on call-a-ride will be seriously inconvenienced. It will be a disaster, just like it was last year. And everyone will know that Ed Martin, as a local political personality with a big microphone, is one of the reasons the campaign failed. Does he seriously think anyone in St. Louis would vote for him after he tries to take out a crucial part of St. Louis infrastructure?

Ed Martin Links to Fanboy Blog to Claim he "Got Some Press"

Ed Martin claimed today on facebook and twitter that he got some press on his recent campaign video:


The Globe-Democrat is a right-wing online "newspaper," so the statement sounds believable. But what Martin linked to wasn't press at all, but rather a user-generated blog on the website from someone called "the Unablogger." In other words, anyone can log on the newspaper and write anything they want. Kinda like this post: Ed Martin Abuses St. Louisans Trust.

Ultimate Irony! Ed Martin Ducks Out of Debate with Primary Challanger!

Ed Martin, as part of a publicity stunt, challenged Congressman Russ Carnahan to attend a "townhall meeting." Carnahan, like any smart politician, ignored Martin because if he didn't everyone would think that he could be easily bullied. Of course, Martin and the right wingers freaked out about the fact that Carnahan wasn't at their fake town hall.

But get this: earlier in January, Ed Martin had already agreed to debate Republican Primary challenger John Wayne Trucker, and then chickened out! So Mr. "I heart free speech" Martin was afraid to have a honest-to-God democratic debate, and then turned around and tried to attack Carnahan for not attending his astroturf event.

Maybe someone should have told Mr. Trucker than Martin only attends debates in Todd Akin's district.

Ed Martin Approves of Lying to Congressional Staffers

Local winger Adam Sharp of the blog Sharp Elbows, apparently realizing that trying to post analysis of the health care bill doesn't work very well when you don't have a clue what's in the legislation, has gone back to his tired old schtick of capturing himself being obnoxious to "libruls" on video. In the latest episode, Sharp lies to one of Congressman Russ Carnahan's staffers by claiming that Carnahan "promised to have another town hall meeting before the health care vote" as an excuse to act rude.

Sharp tells Carnahan's staffer, "he [Carnahan] did promise that he would have another town hall before the vote" (0:35 in the video) and repeats the lie throughout the video. That statement by Sharp was based on a purported comment by Carnahan where he said that he should host a town hall "on manners" in response to tea partiers like Sharp who yelled, interrupted, and insulted Democratic Congresspeople throughout last August. As is obvious to anyone with familiarity with the English language, statements made sarcastically or jokingly are not "promises" and no rational human would have taken Carnahan's statement as a "promise to hold a town hall." Nevertheless, Sharp straight up lies to the staffer in an attempt to bully her in front of the camera. What's even more hilarious is in a classic Sharp move (he's by far the biggest crybaby of all of the local tea partiers), he somehow manages to feel persecuted when the staffer says she doesn't remember Carnahan promising that. Here's Adam Sharp's reaction:


Adam Sharp acting rudely is no surprise to anyone. But what is amazing is that a candidate for a congressional office would actually endorse Sharp's behavior of lying to congressional staffers as an excuse to act obnoxiously. Nevertheless, that's exactly what ethically challenged Tea Party/Republican candidate Ed Martin did. Check out his reaction:

On the other hand, considering that Martin was happy to cynically abuse St. Louis residents' love of Anheuser-Busch and willing to waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money to persecute a former employee for following the law, maybe it's not that surprising.

Ed Martin Loves 3rd Congressional District So Much That He Decides to Hold Townhall Somewhere Else

Ed Martin, the ethically challenged former chief of staff for Matt Blunt and current tea party candidate against Russ Carnahan in Missouri's 3rd Congressional District, apparently cares so much about the opinions of residents of his district that he decided to hold his political stunt townhall meeting somewhere else. I guess when he's working so hard to create a fake controversy, he couldn't be bothered trying to find a place, you know, in the actual district he's running in.

h/t to FiredUp.

Ed Martin Misuses SaveAB Email List

There was some great journalism over a FiredUp several weeks ago following up on the AP story about how local wingnut hero Ed Martin misused and email list, and went against his word.

Martin, ever the opportunist, had created a website to "Save Anheuser-Busch" back when the reports first came out that InBev was looking to buy AB out. His group didn't do anything to stop the sale, but he sure did collect a lot of names. I'm sure a lot of the people who signed up did so because the website specifically stated that email addresses would be used, "only for this purpose and not for any other purpose."

But Martin went against the promise of the website he created and sent out a message to over 40,000 people on the list directing them to his congressional campaign website. Given Martin's past record, this kind of behavior is hardly surprising, but it is funny to see just how serious tea party members are about their "ethics."

Ed Martin Running as the Glenn Beck Candidate

Stumbled across this interesting advertisement for Ed Martin the other day:

I found it here, though I imagine that the advertisements might be location specific.

Anyway, while I was always skeptical of Ed Martin's ethical virtues given his role in the Eckersley scandal, his frivolous lawsuits, and his general behavior as Chief of Staff for one of the worst governors in Missouri's history, I assumed that he probably had at least some political skill. But trying to run for Missouri's 3rd district as the Glenn Beck candidate? Seriously?

Ed Martin Changes Mistaken Blog Post, But It's Still Wrong

Ed Martin changed his earlier blog post that attacked the wrong website by changing "recovery.org" to "recovery.gov." However, he still gets the basic details so wrong that he'd probably get a C on this if it was a 4th grade book report.

First, following the link to Martin's statement from the blog, he claims that the stimulus resulted in only 73 jobs for the state of Missouri:

But reading the actual webpage, you see that over 14,000 jobs are listed as being created in Missouri, and that the number 73 actually applies to the 3rd Congressional District:


Not only that, but just a few days earlier, Martin had claimed that a different number of jobs had been created in the 3rd district:



If he just posted a few days earlier a higher number, shouldn't he at least explain why he's using the lower number now?

But finally, the worst problem is that even if Martin was able to create a passable 4th grade report, his information is completely misleading. As was noted on the Missouri Political News Blog, most of the state jobs get reported for the Jefferson City Congressional district, so there were jobs created in the 3rd district that are reported in the 4th district. Furthermore, the stimulus was back loaded, so many more jobs will still be created. So Martin's basically just trying to exaggerate incomplete information, and he's not even doing a good job at that.

Maybe he should just stick to filing nuisance lawsuits. He's good at that.

What's Ed Martin Smoking?

Wow, Ed Martin really seems to be going off the deep end lately. He recently posted a tweet suggesting that global warming is a hoax:

Maybe that kind of crazy is just what he needs to do to keep his tea party base riled up. But what's really goofy is this recent statement from Martin on the stimulus. First, as pointed out by the Missouri Political News Blog, Martin gets off to a bad start by criticizing the wrong website, recovery.org, a private website that is not run by the government.

Then, in the press release, Martin claims that only 73 jobs have been created in Missouri!

But it's quite clear from the actual website that the state of Missouri has created over 14,000 jobs from stimulus money. Martin must, in fact, be talking about the 3rd District, which shows 73.7 jobs created, but as MPNB points out part of this number reflects the fact that most of the jobs are assigned to the Jefferson City Congressional District (which is listed as creating over 12,000 jobs). Yet even this would be a weird claim, considering that just a few days earlier Martin had claimed that 102 jobs were created in District 3. He can't even keep his own misleading claims straight!

Naturally, the tea people would love to have someone as completely incompetent as Martin in the U.S. Congress.

How Long Will Ed Martin Leave Up The Racial Slur Video?

Earlier in the year, it was reported that the RNC kept racist pictures posted by users up on their facebook page for nearly a week.

Well, Ed Martin has now kept a video that includes a racial slur up on his facebook page for two full days.  

(the slur is at about the 5:14 mark on the video above)

In fact, since that time he has remarked on how interesting the discussions are on his facebook page:

I would think that Martin would want to take a racially insensitive video down from his site as soon as possible.

Man Who Hosted Ed Martin's Campaign Kickoff Uses Racial Slur at Tea Party Rally

David McArthur, a St. Louis business owner who got a lot of attention first by claiming that Representative Russ Carnahan was going to put his bakery out of business by supporting the cap and trade bill and later by hosting the official campaign announcement for Ed Martin at his bakery, used the racial slur "raghead" in a speech to fellow tea party members this weekend. McArthur used the slur while suggesting that Obama had somehow leaked vital information to the AP by discussing his plans for Afghanistan, implying that Obama's consideration of the issue was putting our troops in danger (Obama, by the way, has not yet decided what changes, if any, will be made in Afghanistan).

You can see McArthur's initial campaign kickoff announcement for Martin here:

And here's the video where McArthur uses the racial slur "raghead" (start watching at about 1:30, he uses the term around 1:43):



Of course, Dana Loesch happily promoted the speech:

Update: Fixed spelling of McArthur.  Also, this post was linked to on the Post-Dispatch's Political Fix blog.  Check the comments there if you'd like to see some wingnuts attempting to justify racial slurs. Fired Up! Missouri also linked here.  Readers directed here by Dana Loesch should see this post.

Ed Martin Suggests "The Left" is Trying to Steal NY23 Election

Ed Martin repeatedly suggested via twitter that, "The Left" might "steal" the NY23 election if it's close. Right, because we all know how "the Left" has stolen so many recent U.S. elections. Conspiracy theory much, Ed?

Ed Martin Shopping for Veterans

Ed Martin put out a call to Afghanistan Veterans, tweeting, "I need your help!"

Because, you know, he doesn't actually know any Afghanistan Vets from his district who support his candidacy, but he's sure there must be some out there somewhere.

Ed Martin Asks: Can We Get 300 FB Fans by Halloween? Short Answer: No

Ed Martin repeatedly put out a call on Twitter to see if he could get 300 followers by Halloween:

And seeing as how it's the day after Halloween, we can now evaluate just how strong Martin's campaign really is:

Awww, so sad. He only got to 234, leaving him over 1/5 short of his stated goal. And just to give this some perspective, Russ Carnahan has twice as many supporters despite not putting out a call, and the Bring Back Mr. DeLong group that was created in response to a teacher being suspended for assigning a scientific article about homosexuality is over 1,700 people in less than a week. Martin's campaign is truly weak, but of course we all know that his campaign is not really about winning, but rather trying to help the Senate race.

Who's Supporting Ed Martin's Congress Run?

Given that, as Jake Wagman tweeted, "Observation from Ed's kick-off: No signs, words about anything GOP," I wonder who was the voice in Ed's ear telling him to run. Who could it be?
Whooooo could it be?
Oh, I don't know, I guess I'll just have to take a stab in the dark. Could it be....

SATAN!?!

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