Clinton County Chair In Iowa Is Asked To Step Down After Sending Anti-Muslim E-mail

A county chair for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has been caught sending an e-mail casting aspersions on Sen. Barack Obama's religion, and today, the Clinton campaign asked the person, a volunteer, to leave the campaign.

A Dodd supporter in Iowa wrote about the e-mails on the Daily Kos site, and the Clinton campaign.

The ever vigilant Clinton web guru Peter Daou emailed a response:

There is no place in our campaign, or any campaign, for this kind of politics. A volunteer county coordinator made the mistake of forwarding an outrageous and offensive chain e-mail. This was wholly unauthorized and we were totally unaware of it. Let me be clear: No one should be engaging in this. We are asking this volunteer county coordinator to step down and are making it clear to every person involved in our campaign that this will not be tolerated.

Comments

Funny how this is revealed the day after the Clinton campaign accuses Obama of "dirty tricks," which consists at most of maybe a rude push poll if even true , and then one of their county chairs is going around spreading smears like this. And it comes out on the same say they put up an ad with wes clark saying other people are attacking her. Oops.

Posted by RKA | December 5, 2007 2:35 PM

He mailed a response- because of integrity, or because they got caught? The rest of that article on Daily Kos makes it clear that the Clinton Campaign will go to any length to smear Obama, because he has knocked the wind out of her sails, and she feels she is entitled to a free ride to the white house. She made a huge point of one caller who identified himself as from the Obama campaign leaning heavily on a Clinton supporter in a telephone interview, and used it to make it look as if Obama is push polling. What is this, in comparison? This is hate mongering at its worse. It's hate crime, and should be treated as such.

Posted by katharine | December 5, 2007 2:40 PM

The Clinton Campaign is lying. That's all. Plain and simple. Period. They know what going on. Hillary has been slandering Obama with her own misinformation for days. This should come as no surprise.
But I think this latest news has done a huuge amount of harm to Hillary both in Iowa....and everywhere.
Wave good-bye to your presidential aspirations, Hillary!! They are as false as the lies your people are spreading about Barack Obama.

Posted by Shoshiru Takemitsu | December 5, 2007 2:50 PM

Where are the lead headlines that we witnessed yesterday from major media headlines and the Des Moines Register more than willing to run with the Clinton Campaign's accusations from TWO PEOPLE that Senator Obama's Campaign were bullying voters? Yesterday, they were more than willing to join the Clinton Campaign's character smear against Senator Obama for the alleged actions of campaign volunteers merely manning phone lines, probably from their own homes, but today a Clinton Co-Chair is caught red-handed engaging in a well-known racist and anti-muslim smear campaign and it only gets coverage on blogs? Does it not matter that when this smear originated months ago, albeit on Fox Noise, the source was said to be the Clinton Campaign? Does it not matter that her Chief Spokesperson, on Face The Nation on Sunday, sent out a not so veiled warning "Americans don't know everything about Senator Obama." He was clearly trying to suggest something sinister, perhaps that Senator Obama is Manchurian Candidate? This double-standard in reporting is as outrageous as the smear!

Posted by Dawn | December 5, 2007 2:53 PM

Now Ben Smith is blogging that at least one of the people in the email chain (prior after?) was also a Clinton staffer. Not sure what to make of it or why it would be hanging around in staffer email boxes instead of deleted and in the trash bin.

Posted by JC | December 5, 2007 3:22 PM

There's no evidence that the Clinton campaign was behind the Madrassa hoax as Insight Magazine suggested...

But Jonathan Alter wrote a piece at the time last January which included this from Harold Ickes...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

“If they [bloggers] can finger you trying to drop poison into the well, you’ll be hurt by it,” Ickes adds. “Stuff moves out so quickly that campaigns have to exercise much more control over their negative information apparatus.”

~~~~~~~~~

It’s certainly in no way an admission that Hillary Clinton’s "negative information appartus" was behind the madrassa hoax. But, it’s hard not to read that as an affirmation that "well, you know, maybe we throw around a lot of nasty ideas and if people got wind of some of them, it wouldn’t look so good for us."

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16842036/site/newsweek/

Posted by Vermonter | December 5, 2007 3:42 PM

Clinton is becoming more and more desperate as her sails lose winds day by day. Obama is exposing the real Clinton, a foul and disgusting human. I sincerely hope Obama doesn't do something as underhanded and stupid as Clinton just did. I also hope Obama beat the living piss out of Clinton in the primaries and is the president until 2016.

Posted by Pablo | December 5, 2007 3:52 PM

But she has experience!!!!

Four years of Hillary is just four more years of Bush lying, secrecy, and obfuscation, just with a left of center slant.

Posted by Jayhawk Max | December 5, 2007 4:19 PM

Pretty clear the link to Hillary has been established on both ends. This was sent from a Hillary County chair to a Hillary campaign staffer

15 DAYS AGO.

Why wasn't the HRC Co. chair who sent this fired immediately? Answer: Because they just got caught today!

That speaks volumes to me and should doom her candidacy. Disgraceful

Posted by jt | December 5, 2007 4:31 PM

"... casting aspersions on Sen. Barack Obama's religion..."

Despite his name, Senator Obama is actually a Christian. He is not a Muslim. I would say that factoid is pretty important.

Posted by Pat Green | December 5, 2007 4:52 PM

There are 99 counties in Iowa. If there were anything but a roauge initative, surely more Clinton County leaders would have been found doing the same.

Posted by Everett Hughes | December 5, 2007 5:00 PM

There are 99 counties in Iowa. If there were anything but a personal initative, surely more Clinton County leaders would have been found doing the same.

Posted by Everett Hughes | December 5, 2007 5:01 PM

Politico is reporting that the Clinton staffer who got the email immediately responded to the sender that the email was "ignorant and racist" and that he "could not believe people believe this stuff."

Considering how many of my Republican friends have sent me this crap email, I am blaming Mitt Romney, Guiliani and McCain for spreading it.

Posted by Teresa | December 5, 2007 5:10 PM

SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON IS GOING TO MAKE A GREAT PRESIDENT.

Posted by JOHN | December 5, 2007 5:39 PM

Vermonter,

I get your point, but the question still remains why was the MSM so eager to carry the water of the Clinton Campaign by publishing ITS allegations of Obama Campaign "dirty tricks" based solely on the sketchy memory of two Iowans that the campaign provided without any evidence to back it up? But with this matter, which is inarguably far more egregious and paper trail, there is virtually no coverage from MSM? They seemed much to willing to help the Clinton Campaign pin the behavior of some kid manning the phone lines on the Senator, but not willing to hold Clinton responsible for the behavior of a more senior volunteer by comparison and staffer?

Posted by Dawn | December 5, 2007 5:59 PM

Iam confident that Hillary has nothing to do with this. It is sad that she gets blamed for the actions of one volunteer. Where was the outrage when his ad guy created that disaster of a You Tube anti Hillay ad? Oh how quickly you all forget what Obama has done to her. Funny thing is I'm an African-American male who supports Hillary!!!! She really does have a lot of support. It is NOT eroding! She will be a GREAT President!

Posted by SeattleLatte | December 5, 2007 6:08 PM

Oops, I commented about this on the thread above. But it should be noted, this is the second time.

Remember last spring and the thing about Obama being educated in an extremist Muslim elementary school? Some conservative website posted that they got the information from the Clinton campaign. The Clinton campaign denied it, and without a paper trail, the issue went away.

This time there's a paper, er, an electron trail.

Plus let's not forget the Novak thing, in which he claimed the Clinton campaign offered information on Obama.

Does anyone believe her campaign's denials anymore?

Posted by Paul | December 5, 2007 6:21 PM

Let's face it folks..the Clintons have absolutely no credibility. They've been spewing the hate to various journalists about Obama; Insight magazine who originally put out the story that CNN debunked said it came from the Clintons..just google "obama madrassa." The irrational kindergarten-gate of last weekend. Their longstanding morally bankrupt behaviour.. It all adds up. Very sad. She's not been my candidate but I surely didn't think she'd stoop this low. Trying to destroy one of the most gifted and inspiring democrats we've seen in generations. I hope that those who care about her can convince her to back out gracefully. I don't want her in charge of this country.

Posted by Elisabeth | December 5, 2007 6:45 PM

Honestly, I simply cannot imagine Sen. Clinton's campaign team being, well, stupid enough to use this particular smear tactic. I'm not speaking of the on-the-ground volunteers, mind you (as was the case with this particular e-mail, as far as we know), but of the actual strategy-setting inner circle: those people are professionals, and must know how damaging this would be.

Republicans can get away with this sort of hateful tactic (e.g., the McCain "black baby" bile in 2000) because their base doesn't care if they get caught: so what if Giuliani was caught sending out the "Obama/Osama is teh Mooslem" e-mail? How much would that really hurt him amongst the voters that he's targeting? Not very much (and might even pick him up a few).

But Sen. Clinton's team must know that this would be a deal-breaker for most Democratic voters if it could be traced back to them. Surely they couldn't be that flat-out-dumb, could they?

Could they?

Posted by SGEW | December 5, 2007 7:24 PM

Yes they could..it came out yesterday that they hate Obama..http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/davidcorn/2007/12/hillary-on-obama-fear-and-hatr.html

Posted by Elisabeth | December 5, 2007 7:53 PM

"Oh how quickly you all forget what Obama has done to her."

What exactly has Obama done to her other than call her on the carpet to explain her BS about her alleged experience? What has he done other than raise some questions about her policies and past votes on Iraq and Iran? All the while he has been telling people what he wants to accomplish as president and how he will do it.

Posted by Mark Billingsley | December 5, 2007 8:22 PM

The original email may have come from some racist but, it would be up the clinton alley to pick it up and circulate it periodically to revive the talk.
With the current polling and hillary sliding, especially in the early states, it would be of use to them to circulate it again.
Yesterday, David Corn wrote about how much hate there is in Hillaryland for Obama for his thinking he could keep Hillary from her rightful place as the nominee. And the mindset in the campaign was to destroy the man.
This curtainly would back that article up and show how they would do anything to make sure Obama does not win the nomination.
he said it has made them go for overreach. To me, it proves how clouded their judgment has become and this would play right into that mindset.

Posted by vwcat | December 5, 2007 8:47 PM

""Rose sent it to the members of the committee to "show people how dirty politics is" and did not agree with the content of the e-mail."""

from AP http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j4w4BzRKRNaOdwsYTZ2LN9pzYDIwD8TBIDE00

Oh Lord, I'm supposed to believe this?

I hope there's an investigation or that other people come forward.

Posted by Elisabeth | December 5, 2007 9:00 PM

At the very least, Hillary Clinton is setting the tone for her campaign, and she has been clear in her desire to "expose" Obama, such as attacking his PAC.

Posted by Sheldon | December 5, 2007 10:37 PM

A couple points on this statement that caught my eye.

First, the statement said that the "coordinator made the mistake of forwarding..." What does he mean by "made the mistake"? This makes it seem as if it was an accident. Forwarding a smear email about Obama is not an accident, is it?

Second, he said "We are asking this volunteer county coordinator to step down..." Asking? Are you joking me? Asking someone to step down for embarassing the hell out of your campaign by purposefully forwarding a smear email about your biggest competitor and getting caught? Sorry Hillary, but you don't ask them to step down. You "fire" them "effective immediately".

Just a little FYI from someone who watched too much of "The Apprentice".

Posted by CornBred | December 5, 2007 11:13 PM

When you say "Sen. Barack Obama's religion" you imply his religion is Muslim. His religion is actually United Church of Christ.

Posted by KathyF | December 6, 2007 2:45 AM

One thing...it's not just conservatives that remember what scummy people the Clintons are. One just needs to read the congressional testimony and depositions from their first stint in the White House to remind oneself of the slimy people Bill and Hill are.

Trust me, no matter what she says, it was no 'vast right-wing conspiracy' that caused their problems in the 90s...it was their utter lack of remorse and willingness to do anything to get what they wanted.

The two of them are very scary people...be afraid, be very afraid!

:)

Posted by Tucson Annie | December 6, 2007 4:48 AM