Yassky Campaign Shakeup??
Awhile back David Yassky, my city councilman and a candidate for the NY-11 Congressional race, had a staff member quit over racial issues. That full story never came out as far as I am aware, but it was the loss of his main black staff member. This didn't get much coverage, given how much coverage the race issue has gotten, but was a minor blip early in the campaign.
Well, there seems to be anothe staff shake up on the Yassky team. I hear from two separate reliable sources that Yassky has fired one of his top staff members, political director Rachel Goodman. (I previously reported her as Yassky's campaign manager because she has always been his front-person from what I have seen and most people I know referred to her as such. But I have been corrected: she is not his campaign manager...though she sure seemed to have been filling that role). The rumor, which is essentially two second hand reports, does not give a reason other than a vague rererence to Yassky "freaking out" over "something going wrong."
I have it on fairly good authority that Rachel has not been too fond of my blogging and may well have been one of the anonymous bloggers that has attacked me quite vigorously before. However, whatever the truth of that, it is very hard for me to see how anything has gone majorly wrong with Yassky's campaign. Although I favor one of his rivals, Chris Owens, based on issues, I don't see how anyone can fault the fundraising and petitioning of the Yassky campaign, presumably thanks to Ms. Goodman's efforts. So, what happened?
I have no animosity towards Yassky or his campaign people, though I do hope they lose to Chris and do take some glee in being a minor thorn in their side. But if this rumor is true, we all want to know what went wrong in paradise and I wish Rachel best of luck in her next endeavors. I assume more information will come in the near future.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
2006 Elections | Breaking News | Politics | US Congress | Brooklyn | CD-11 | Democratic Party
Rachel
Submitted by mole333 on 5 July 2006 - 10:31pm.
Frosty doesn't even describe how she has been to me, but I have nothing against her. She struck me as, if anything, overly dedicated to the Yassky cause, which is appropriate for a campaign manager. Without having more info I can't judge what happened, but I really can't say that it seemed like Rachel was anything that an excellent campaign manager. Any flaws seemed flaws in the candidate, not the campaign. But, we shall see.
Yassky shakeup
Submitted by Anonymous Coward (not verified) on 6 July 2006 - 1:06am.
the office at bergen steet was a little too top heavy, with people and not enough boots in the streets getting the word and message out. Maybe they spent all their time reading blogs? instead of reading the pulse of the people.
Shakeup
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 6 July 2006 - 8:25am.
Rachel was never the campaign manager, just FYI.
If there was a campaign
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 6 July 2006 - 9:10am.
If there was a campaign manager on that campaign, Rachel was it.
Yassky may have sunk his campaign by firing her.
No really
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 6 July 2006 - 9:28am.
Greg is the Campaign Manager.
They are polling dead last
Submitted by Anonymous Coward (not verified) on 6 July 2006 - 10:01am.
They are polling dead last and Yassky has ZERO support beyond the white Jewish neighborhoods. They humor him when the Times and Washington Post are there taking pictures, but say his name when he's not around and you'll see cringing.
The Yassky campaign speaks
Submitted by Bouldin on 6 July 2006 - 12:17pm.
...with their usual level of acumen, relevance and maturity. Feh.
Give Rachel some credit...
Submitted by mole333 on 6 July 2006 - 12:22pm.
She could at least put together a better attack than Mr. or Ms. Anonymous above. Of course, so can Yassky himself, but I do find that many Yassky supporters are, shall we say, less than intelligent in their dialogue.
A hornets nest
Submitted by Bouldin on 6 July 2006 - 12:46pm.
...that you've stirred up here, it seems. BTW, Ben Smith reports that this is due to frugality on the part of the campaign; yeah, right.
Anonymous
Submitted by Anonymous Coward, that's me (not verified) on 6 July 2006 - 1:46pm.
they are not handling some of the hyper development issues well and the progressives are diappointed that Yassky is not more vociferous in responding to the clearly out of scale privitization, loss of public space, etc issues...
The word I hear is...
Submitted by rwallnerny on 10 July 2006 - 7:21pm.
The word I heard over the weekend from reliable sources is that Yassky has decided to spend some of his vast pile of campaign money to put a more "professional" face on his campaign. In other words to call in hired outside professional campaign hands from D.C. and elsewhere, and that Rachel Goodman quit, she wasn't fired, rather than take a demotion in favor of the new hired hands. I think the situation is similar to when Joe Trippi quit the Dean campaign rather than take a demotion in favor of professional outsiders being brought in after the Iowa debacle.
It is two months before the election, and the staffs of all the candidates are expanding. You expect feet to get stepped on when the new people arrive and Rachel's feet got stepped on. I don't think the polls had anything to do with it, undecideds are so high that the polls don't mean much at this point.
Thanks
Submitted by mole333 on 10 July 2006 - 9:24pm.
This doesn't agree with either story I have heard, but may well be true. One story I have heard was that Yassky is freaking out over the lack of progress the campaign is making. Since Rachel does NOT seem responsible for the worst of this that I know of, it is hard for me to believe it. But the story from the OTHER side is that Yassky needs to save money...which REALLY makes no sense!!!
Your analysis makes reasonable sense even if it doesn't agree with the current stories ciculating. Thanks for the input.
Wow...
...guess money can't buy away the fact that the guy doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell. Perhaps he's not the type that handles adversity well, who knows?
Too bad about Rachel; she's been rather frosty to me of late (I wonder why?), but she's a good kid nonetheless.