Corry Bliss’ time here in Vermont running Brian Dubie’s losing race for governor has followed him to Connecticut. He is there running World Wrestling Entertainment owner Linda McMahon’s senate campaign. Second time senatorial wannabe Linda McMahon can’t be pleased with this recent headline about her campaign manager. Linda McMahon’s Campaign Manager Had a Controversial Past in Vermont
Connecticut’s Hartford Courant picked up on the latest in the continuing Vermont legal battle over alleged illegal coordination between the Republican Governor’s Association (RGA) and Dubie’s campaign staff. Bliss is not named in the lawsuit but was questioned about his role. Here is part of what Connecticut voters got to read about Bliss in the Green Mountains:
It’s not the first controversy Bliss became ensnared in during his time in Vermont. Last year, he settled a lawsuit with a developer who had accused him of libeling his character during the 2010 gubernatorial campaign. Bliss and Dubie both wrote letters of apology to settle the case.
Not the kind of thing McMahon may want to read about her manager who is paid $7,500.00 every other week (more than double Dubie campaign pay). And there is this testimonial to Bliss’ particular form of alchemy which will put him in solidly with his new boss.
“Corry Bliss took a candidate that was up 20 points and turned him into a loser by election day,” said Bradford Broyles, a Republican activist from Mendon, a town in the central part of the state, near Killington. “We’re still repairing the damage to the Republican party…If Corey[sic] Bliss runs [McMahon’s campaign] like he did up here, hold on to your seats.”
“Campaign manager” must be a marvelous occupation. Apparently, if you’ve got experience, you can always get another job — even if you have an unbroken track record of losing.
Bliss graduated from law school in 2006. In 2008, he ran the unsuccessful re-election bid of Republican US Representative Thelma Drake of Virginia. Okay, that was a Democratic year. But then he, by many accounts, turned Brian Dubie from a solid front-runner to a loser. And now he gets a 100% pay hike to run Linda McMahon’s campaign. Yeesh.
Bliss can probably look forward to more of the same. After he manages McMahon to another loss, he’ll run a few more campaigns into the ground, and eventually he’ll become a sage campaign analyst/consultant a la Dick Morris and Mark Penn and Bob Shrum.
Of course Republicans define as “success” anything that happens to them and “failure” as anything that happens to Democrats; so in the upside-down world of Republiland, Bliss can probably say he “meant to do that.”
“Corry is in no way involved in this lawsuit . . ”
No way? OK, what does “no way” mean to a Republican spokesperson?
Here we go . . . “No way Corry involved” . . . except that:
1. Corwin Bliss testified under oath that he was a conduit between the RGA and the Dubie campaign.
2. The lawsuit filed by the State of Vermont is 25 pages long w/over 100 paragraphs of factual background & allegations.
3. I stopped counting references to, or statements made by, Cory Bliss after only the first 2 and 1/2 pages of factual allegations. After just these first few pages, I had already counted over 25 references to Bliss’s involvement in the underlying facts of the this lawsuit.
4. Corry Bliss and Denise Casey are the two central figures in the lawsuit.
5. Corry Bliss is one of, if not the, primary witness for the State of Vermont in this lawsuit.
6. Corry Bliss’s and Denise Casey’s sworn testimony is at the core of the lawsuit.
7. Corry Bliss’s and Denise Casey’s conduct is the central basis for the “State of Vermont vs. NGA 762-12-11, Wash. Co., Civil Div.” lawsuit.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Dear Ms. Isaac, feel free to read the lawsuit, in which Corry Bliss “is in no way involved,” right here. How does the saying go? “Something blah blah something pants-on-fire?”
I think it’s more about the candidates this hack hooks up with. Give him a sure bet, like someone running in Orange County, California, or Wichita. Even a blind GOP lackie should be able to find a wealthy, close-minded bastion every once and a while.
Victory has a hundred mothers, but defeat is an orphan. I’m sure Cory Bliss contributed to Dubie’s problems, but that was most certainly a group effort.