Tom Shepard responds
Tom Shepard, the political consultant running Mayor Jerry Sanders’ campaign, just got back to my request for comment on Eric Bidwell’s charge that Mike McSweeney was made a patsy in the wake of a controversy that led to McSweeney’s resignation from the Sanders team. Bidwell told CityBeat he has a hunch that it was Shepard behind an effort to get Bidwell to trash Steve Francis during a debate last night.
“It’s not correct,” Shepard said. “We do not permit conduct like that in a campaign.” He said the flap is a “terrible embarrassment,” but it was remedied immediately. He said McSweeney realized that his behavior was “over the line” and that the suddenly former campaign manager apologized directly to Sanders.
Shepard took the opportunity to take a jab at Francis, saying that the difference between the two campaigns is that when the Sanders team makes a mistake, it owns up to it immediately, while Francis continues to make fabrications throughout the campaign and never apologizes.
Heh heh heh – the UT refers to a campaign “worker” and a campaign “staffer”. No reference to Mc Sweeney’s title of “Campaign Manager”.
Everyone knows that no one makes a move it that campaign without Shepard’s blessing.
Watching him and the UT squirm out of this one is going to be fun!
everything in a campaign is scripted. everything. mcsweeney just didn’t know that, and now he gets to be the fall guy for a very dirty stunt.
yeah, fall guy mcswenney;