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Sunday, January 6, 2008
Cardwell stunt latest in long line
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s getting close to a week since U.S. Sen. Candidate Dale Cardwell perched himself more than 300 feet above the streets of Atlanta to draw attention to his nascent campaign.
And while he sits by himself, Cardwell, a Democrat, is not alone.
Eager to gain name recognition and to raise money for long-shot campaigns, untold numbers of candidates have pulled stunts of their own, from selling handyman services on e-Bay to faking their own disappearance.
The late Lawton Chiles, who would go on to become governor of Florida, was running for the U.S. Senate himself in 1970 when he decided to walk 1,000 miles across the state in 91 days to meet voters personally.
Chiles won the Senate seat and earned the nickname that would follow him throughout his political career, “Walkin’ Lawton.”
A virtually unknown write-in candidate for governor of Ohio, Larry Bays, put himself up for bid on the internet auction site e-Bay to raise money for his campaign. He’s No. 8 on the linked site.
Bays offered to do handyman tasks around voters’ homes in exchange for campaign cash. He got one bid and 73 votes in the election. He was overshadowed, however, by a heated auction over a cutting board signed by actor Tony Danza.
Then there’s the story and a few pics of Mike Weaver, a 2006 congressional candidate in Kentucky who took over a Marathon gas station and sold gas for $1.20 a gallon, less than half the actual cost at the time.
Cars were lined up for blocks. And Weaver was out $1,500 - the difference between the full cost and his cut-rate price. Locals deemed the stunt a success.
And finally there’s the case of Gary Dodds.
Dodds was running for Congress in New Hampshire in 2006 when his car, a Lincoln Continental with “Dodds for Congress” painted on it, crashed into a turnpike guardrail and Dodds himself disappeared.
Dodd was missing for 27 hours before police found him covered in leaves along a riverbank. Dodds claimed he swam across the river, but police got suspicious because only Dodds’ shoes were wet when he was found.
Opponents quickly asserted that the whole thing was a stunt by a candidate badly in need of attention and cash. Dodds denied it and called it a “politically motivated witch hunt” by critics and the media.
“It’s an election year,” Dodds said without any hint of irony, “and I think it’s interesting timing that (widespread coverage of his accident) are now front-page news.”
