“(Bleep) him.”
It’s probably the most honest utterance to date in the increasingly toxic battle for the governor’s office, which is starting to look more like a barroom brawl than a political campaign.
John Weaver, one of the paid consultants who abandoned Tim Cahill’s campaign along with Cahill’s running mate Paul Loscocco, wrote the entertaining but unquotable response. He was responding to an email that was forwarded from a Cahill loyalist who was promising to personally finance a lawsuit against Weaver if he and his friends were to deliver sensitive internal campaign materials to GOP rival Charlie Baker.
The expletive was buried among the slew of emails attached to the suit filed yesterday in Norfolk Superior Court against Weaver and three other employees of Strategic National, a consulting firm known for working for conservative Republicans including Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign.
Judge Barbara Dortch-Okara issued a temporary restraining order this morning barring the quartet from sharing information with anyone and has scheduled a hearing next Wednesday afternoon before deciding whether to issue an injunction.
The suit is an interesting political and legal read about the behind-the-curtains machinations of running a high profile race and all the drama attached to it. But even more fascinating are the campaign proposals and promises from Weaver and his associate John Yob and the emails that started flying fast and furious between Weaver, Yob, Adam Meldrum, the campaign manager, and Jason Zanetti, a lobbyist with close ties to Loscocco.
The emails include some damaging information about job offers from the Republican Governors Association, which unleashed a scorched earth advertising campaign aimed at Cahill for the last several months, and reports of conversations and email exchanges with members of Baker’s campaign.
It also shows how communicating in the new age can be perilous and how technologically inept many of the principles are, since their private accounts were tied into the Cahill campaign server even after they left. Several of the emails are dated from Oct. 1 on, the day Loscocco announced his fealty to Baker. “The deed is done,” Yob wrote at 9:31 a.m. Oct. 1, the minute Loscocco informed Cahill he was jumping ship.