This is just surreal. The Arizona Democratic Party issued the following statement this afternoon. Due to the extreme bizarreness of this development, I’m reprinting the release in full:
Lost and Found: John Shadegg’s campaign credit card discovered at Democratic office
A credit card for John Shadegg’s campaign was found this weekend under the front desk of a Democratic Party office.
The card is issued to a senior Shadegg campaign operative, lists Shadegg’s re-election organization and was found near Democratic campaign materials.
The Democratic Party notified Shadegg’s campaign office that the card has been found. The party has also filed a report with the Tempe Police Department and with the credit card company.
“It’s extremely disturbing that a senior campaign operative for Republican John Shadegg would leave a credit card under a desk at one of our offices,” said Maria Weeg, Executive Director of the Arizona Democratic Party. “We let Congressman Shadegg know we found his credit card and requested Shadegg promptly explain what a member of his staff was doing in our office and how his campaign credit card arrived in our office.”
Congressman Shadegg has a responsibility to personally answer the following questions:
1) How did his campaign credit card arrive in a Democratic Party office?
2) What was a member of his congressional and campaign staff doing in the office?
3) Did his staff member access any information in the office or remove any materials – and, if so, will he return this information and materials?
UPDATE: Mystery solved, I guess:
Update from Shadegg campign. Email from campaign to Arizona Democratic Party.
Maria,
Thank you very much for bringing this to my attention.
I’m just learning about this, sorry about the delay in getting back to you.
I have learned that it was a credit card issued to xxxxxx who gave it to a volunteer, xxxxxx, who was in the Tempe area and he saw the Obama office and went in to get a bumper sticker. Apparently it fell out of his pocket when he paid for the bumper sticker.
We cancelled the card last night when we realized it was lost.
Thank you for turning it over to the police.
As barium says in the comments, it looks like even Shadegg’s volunteers prefer Obama over McCain!
LATE UPDATE: Not so fast — it turns out that this “volunteer” was Shadegg’s deputy campaign manager!
weird. And sounds very bad for him.
I hope Shadegg responds stupidly and we find out the truth. The potential for that could be huge.
Let’s hope he’s not smart enough to try and make it into a ‘he said, she said’ story.
if Shadegg’s campaign had ‘planted’ it there, so that they could report it as stolen and then ‘discover’ it.
Who knows?
it does look like it was stolen. That seems much more likely than it being left behind by someone on his staff while breaking in. Watching the AZ office trying to spin this against Shadegg looks really stupid. The police will not be amused, nor will the voters.
If the Democrats “stole” it, why would they inform the police? There is no reason advantage to them if the stole it – it’s is not like they a.) could use it or b.) adversely effect the opponents campaign. If for some bizarre reason they had stolen it, they probably would have disposed of it (to get rid of evidence, destroying it would not hurt the Shadegg campaign).
If it is a plant then it was poorly executed as the they found it and handed it over. Even then the Democrats could have just disposed of it without getting caught “red handed” (how would the Shadegg campaign be able to say that Democrats have it?).
What I could see is an operative infiltrating the office and accidentally leaving the evidence. But that seems unlikely as there is very little chance you lose a credit card by itself (unless he had it lose in his pocket by itself???). How would they infiltrate the office? What’s the chances that they would infiltrate and then leave this kind of evidence? I’d say very little.
This is very bizarre to say the least.
http://www.politickeraz.com/wa…
PolitickerAZ says a Shadegg volunteer lost it when they were getting Obama bumper stickers.
Where was Gordon Liddy when this happened? Oh nevermind, if it was Liddy he would have been caught redhanded.
I leave for a few hours and look at the mayhem I missed. Too bad this didn’t go anywhere. I’d love another ultra-conservative scandal right after Bachmann. Well, the day isn’t over yet……….