The case against Ben Quayle
1. He’s unqualified. He doesn’t have a profession. He’s trained as a lawyer, recently started an “investment firm.” He hasn’t held a job in his life for more than a year or two.
2. When the nation, two years ago, was facing challenges on several fronts—mismanaged wars, soaring deficits, an economy falling down a sinkhole, Quayle was nowhere to be seen.
3. Did he offer his opinions or advice? Take a public stand? Maybe even point out that, as a Republican, he was troubled by the holy mess his party had gotten the country in?
4. No. Instead, he was helping a friend get a porny web site off the ground. It was called Dirty Scottsdale, with a plan for establishing itself as Skank Central for the sleazy nightlife crowd.
5. When the economy was collapsing, Ben was writing for the site under the name Brock Landers, and went on a search for “Scottsdale’s foxiest first lady!”
6. Ben moved to the district recently and got a congressional campaign going. His main funding source: Friends of his daddy’s! Former president Bush held a fundraiser for him in Texas! In Texas—for a guy from Phoenix who’s done nothing his entire life.
7. Then it came out that Ben had a skanky past. When questioned… he denied it. Then changed his story. Then said “My response has been consistent.”
8. The Arizona Republic, which used to be owned by his family, helped him out by carefully not going into any detail about his involvement with the porny web site during the Republican primary.
9. In that primary he got about 22 percent of the vote. It was a crowded field; that was enough to win. Even Republicans don’t like him.
10. To get attention, Little Benny ran a commercial saying “Barack Obama is the worst president in history.” Sane people know that Barack Obama isn’t even the worst president of the 21st century.
11. He dodged debates with his opponent, Jon Hulburd, finally agreeing to one half-hour session.
12. His public events have been nil. PHXated’s repeatedly asked his campaign for a single time he’s made a scheduled public appearance. There hasn’t been one we know of.
13. His campaign has also refused to answer basic questions about his positions. There are candidates running for ASU class president who have more substantive issue pages. Does he think woman should be jailed for having an abortion? Should gays be allowed openly to serve in the military? To our knowledge, Quayle has never answered these questions.
8:47 AM
Arizona Republic: No news here! Please move along
As PHXated has mentioned before, the Arizona Republic has a curious approach to news.
If you have a wet-behind-the-ears would-be representative with a famous name who worked for a porny web site, or a governor who goes into the Twilight Zone for ten seconds during a debate, for heaven’s sake don’t treat it as big news or cover it as an ongoing story.
It just gets folks riled up.
Newspapers for decades survived on not riling folks up. (They might cancel their subscription!)
The world’s changed, today, but newspapers haven’t.
The latest: The paper heard, recently, that Gov. Brewer had been in a car crash in 1988 during which, it certainly seems, she’d been driving drunk.
The paper had a scoop!
Stop the presses?
Nope.
Instead, the paper buried it in a fact-checking column in section two. And made the story a he-said she-said sort of thing.
… When in fact the officers at the scene said she’d been drunk, and Brewer failed four sobriety tests! (The comical details are here.
The original Republic article apparently had an interview with Brewer, but didn’t ask her the obvious questions:
How do you explain the failed drunk tests? Should she have been arrested? Would failing four sobriety tests in typical stops lead to drivers being arrested—and shouldn’t they be?
Anyway, since then, Brewer has been trying to do damage control.
Here’s Brewer on CNN, for example:
As PHXated has mentioned before, the Arizona Republic has a curious approach to news.
If you have a wet-behind-the-ears would-be representative with a famous name who worked for a porny web site, or a governor who goes into the Twilight Zone for ten seconds during a debate, for heaven’s sake don’t treat it as big news or cover it as an ongoing story.
It just gets folks riled up.
Newspapers for decades survived on not riling folks up. (They might cancel their subscription!)
The world’s changed, today, but newspapers haven’t.
The latest: The paper heard, recently, that Gov. Brewer had been in a car crash in 1988 during which, it certainly seems, she’d been driving drunk.
The paper had a scoop!
Stop the presses?
Nope.
Instead, the paper buried it in a fact-checking column in section two. And made the story a he-said she-said sort of thing.
… When in fact the officers at the scene said she’d been drunk, and Brewer failed four sobriety tests! (The comical details are here.
The original Republic article apparently had an interview with Brewer, but didn’t ask her the obvious questions:
How do you explain the failed drunk tests? Should she have been arrested? Would failing four sobriety tests in typical stops lead to drivers being arrested—and shouldn’t they be?
Anyway, since then, Brewer has been trying to do damage control.
Here’s Brewer on CNN, for example:
Note that CNN, a national organization, is following up on the story.
Here again, the Arizona Republic had another story of national interest to run with, and it both a) mishandles it at the beginning and b) doesn’t follow up on it.
8:08 AM
To New Times' James King, Ben Quayle is a hunk-a hunk-a burnin' GOP love!
We here at PHXated celebrate polymorphous perversity as much as the next guy or gal, but we don’t see the sexual attraction of Ben Quayle.
He has his dad’s deer-in-the-headlights look. He’s spindly and nervous and dumb as a box of rocks.
And the single notable achievement in his life is writing for a porny web site.
We like our candidates to be up on the issues. We get turned on by the policy wonks.
A few years back, when the country was facing two mismanaged wars, trillions in debt, and a financial meltdown that threatened our way of life, Ben Quayle didn’t lend his voice to the debate.
Instead, he was on the hunt for foxy chicks for Dirty Scottsdale.
But for James King, one of the contributors to New Times' Valley Fever blog, Quayle is the boy-man of his dreams.
Here he is harping on Quayle’s opponent, Jon Hulburd, again for the crime of doing what any other candidate would do. i.e., pour some money in at the end of what’s turned out to be an unexpectedly close race.
Up to now, King’s been writing long posts trying to explain away Quayle’s lies about having worked for Dirty Scottsdale.
As we’ve said before, King’s a serious journalist and New Times is a serious place, but we think King’s being unacceptably partisan on this issue.
PHXated can see that Quayle is a dink and something of a creep, and finds his opponent, Jon Hulburd, to be a guy who’s very smart, up on the issues, and almost compulsively forthright. (He’s basing that contention on one interview and watching, over the weekend, Hulburd in action at a house party meet-and-greet.)
At the same time, we’ve attacked Hulburd’s crazy support for a continuation of the Bush tax cuts, among other things.
And I don’t want to get into the particulars, but we’ve also done something that had one of Hulburd’s top campaign people calling and screaming at us for days.
In other words, PHXated isn’t spinning for Hulburd.
King is definitely spinning for Quayle.
While getting granular in trying to defend Quayle’s handing of his Dirty Scottsdale scandal, King’s basically trying to make the point that Quayle successfully lied to reporters when they asked about his involvement, so it’s not fair either to a) attack him for the involvement or b) accuse him of lying.
That’s strikes us as a bit … extrajournalistic.
And it evades the point that Quayle was running around chasing chicas in Scottsdale when he could have been doing something a little more … public policy oriented.
And now King’s hammering on some lawsuits that were brought against Hulburd ten years ago. He published his first post on these mid-afternoon on Wednesday, Oct. 13… fortuitously timed for Ben Quayle to bring them up in a debate that started less than an hour later.
Another example: in writing about a recent Public Policy Polling poll of the district, King went out of his way to disparage PPP as a liberal outfit.
But in FiveThirtyEight.com’s rating of pollsters, Nate Silver puts PPP in the middle; in fact, the company gets much better scores than a lot of reputable outfits like CNN/Opinion Research, the LA Times/Bloomberg, and Gallup.
(The closeness of the Hulburd/Quayle race was a surprise, and it’s fair to question the findings in that one poll, as King also does; I’m just pointing out another instance where spin seems to be seeping in to King’s analysis as well. PHXated, by the by, went out of its way to note Silver’s skepticism of that particular poll.)
You can read all of PHXated’s Ben Quayle coverage here.
10:00 AM
Jon Hulburd's new ad: "Ben Quayle has no business running for Congress"
The ad nicely captures Quayle’s frat-boy sensibility. One assumes the Hulburd campaign is buoyed by a new poll that sees him leading Quayle 46 to 44.
More interestingly, it put Quayle’s negatives at 52 percent, pretty high in a right-wing district.
The leading Congressional analysts aren’t buying it, but it seems smart to hammer on Quayle’s negatives, if that’s where the advantage lies.
3:03 PM
Laurie Roberts: The Arizona Republic's "go-to newsgal"
Yesterday PHXated noted that the Arizona Republic, in keeping with its feeling that its terrestrial readers don’t want to be bothered with uncomfortable news about Little Benny Quayle, did not include, in its printed edition, a report of a fairly notable poll on the Quayle-Hulburd race.
It said that Quayle was actually trailing Hulburd, 46 to 44, and that his unfavorables were at 52 percent.
While it’s possible the poll was what the big-time analysts call an “outlier,” some of its other findings—support for John McCain and such—were in keeping with the distric’s conservative makeup.
Anyway, the Republic was in a quandary: Having played down as much as possible the previous bad news for Quayle—mostly stemming from his unsavory association with a skanky web site when he could have, you know, been involved in any sort of public service that might make him qualified to go to Congress—it was even more difficult for the paper to write about a poll that showed a big chunk of the electorate was turning up it nose at the candidate, plainly based on the information the paper hadn’t wanted to get out.
Fortunately, Laurie Roberts, a columnist in the local news section, comes through again. It was she who, after the Republican primary was over, told people about Quayle and DirtyScottsdale.com.
Now she’s again columnizing about news that the paper itself has never vouchsafed to readers:
The poll, by Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling, surveyed 655 likely voters and had a margin of error of 3.8 percent. It showed Hulburd and Quayle in a dead heat with 10 percent undecided.
While both men were viewed favorably by a third of those polled, Quayle was disliked by 52 percent, including half of the independents surveyed. Hulburd, meanwhile, was disliked by 20 percent all voters surveyed, with 47 percent unsure what to think.
Interestingly, Roberts cites some evidence of a contention by New Times' James King … basically, not only that Quayle never lied about his involvement in Dirty Scottsdale, but that Politico, the online political magazine, is backing away from its initial contention that he did:
In a recent profile, Politico wrote that Quayle “has always admitted to writing some posts under a pseudonym”. That’s a far cry from its August story, headlined “Ben Quayle changes story about Dirty Scottsdale website”.
[Quayle campaign manager] Heiler says Quayle was responding to questions about whether he was involved in founding the website. The reporter, he said, never directly asked whether he had written for the site.
PHXated’s not buying it, for reasons delineated in the James King post but will look into the question of whether Politico itself is now downplaying what it once trumpeted.
7:46 AM
FiveThirtyEight.com analyzes that poll that puts Ben Quayle behind
From Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog on NYTimes.com:
Public Policy Polling conducts surveys for Democratic candidates (and Daily Kos, a liberal blog) in addition to issuing surveys under its own name. Until recently, we have not found an especially large “house effect” for Public Policy Polling — that is, they’ve had plenty of surveys showing poor numbers for Democrats. But lately, such an effect has arguably become more noticeable: they are the only pollster, for instance, to show the Democrat Michael Bennet with a lead in Colorado, although several other pollsters have shown that race tightening. And their survey of Arizona’s Third Congressional District, which showed the Republican Ben Quayle trailing in a district that ordinarily leans Republican, has raised a few eyebrows, although Mr. Quayle may be an unappealing enough candidate that the result is not necessarily implausible.
6:46 PM
The Arizona Republic takes a pass on Ben Quayle's disastrous poll numbers
We’ve noticed before how the Arizona Republic didn’t take much interest in Little Benny Quayle’s involvement with a porny web site, Dirty Scottsdale.
Skanky sex, a famous political name…those aren’t the sorts of things the media should be interested in.
Now we can see the paper’s not interested in any bad news about Quayle.
Yesterday, a reputable polling company released numbers on the District 3 race. (The company is Public Policy Polling.)
It said Quayle was trailing opponent Jon Hulburd, 46 to 44.
Worse, it gave Quayle a 52 percent unfavorable rating.
Is this news?
Politico this a.m. has a lede story booming “99 Dem House Seats in Danger—that is to say, it’s not a good time to be a Democrat running for Congress.
District 3 went for McCain by a 57 to 42 margin—that is to say, it’s a solidly GOP district.
But nothing about it in the Republic this a.m. Columnist Laurie Roberts, however, did do a blog post:
The poll of 655 likely voters included more Republicans than Democrats and respondents favored Sen. John McCain by a wide margin over Rodney Glassman. Those aspects would seem in line with the district’s partisan makeup and its presumed political loyalties in another race.
But home readers of the paper—the ones who are clustered in the upscale developments in northeast Phoenix, where this battle is being fought—aren’t let in on the news.
7:45 AM
Public Policy Polling: Hulburd ahead of Quayle, 46 to 44
The Daily Kos-sponsored poll has some pretty interesting numbers, the most unexpected of which is Hulburd ahead by two points, 46 percent to 44 percent.
From the post, emphasis added:
Hulburd is winning independents 50-36, and moderates 66-27. While only eight percent of Obama voters are defecting to Quayle, 18 percent of McCain voters are going with Hulburd. And even 19 percent of Republican voters are choosing the Democratic candidate, likely an artifact of a nasty primary. In fact, Quayler’s favorable/unfavorable rating of 34/52 is shockingly bad for a first-time House candidate, and incudes 30 percent unfavorables from Republican voters, and 29/51 from independents. Hulburd is at 33/20, including 37/16 from independents. Yet given that half of voters have no idea what to think of Hulburd, he may be benefiting from an “anyone but Quayle” dynamic.
The big question: How will Ben Quayle’s apologist-in-residence at New Times spin the numbers?
The answer is here—and note how Quayle’s unfavorables aren’t mentioned.
2:00 PM
No, seriously, James King DOES seem to heart Ben Quayle
As PHXated noted earlier today, New Times is an amazing paper with a lot of amazing reporters.
(Readers should know that PHXated worked for New Times in San Francisco way back when and counts the owners and editors among his friends.)
But James King, one of the paper’s frequent political reporters and bloggers, really seems to have a big ol' crush on Ben Quayle.
I’ve noted this a couple of times already, but am just now going back to read everything King’s written about Young Ben.
For starters, PHXated’s written about this already here and here.
Here’s another example.
The other day King trumpeted that Politico had “backed off” its story about Quayle and Dirty Scottsdale:
Here’s what apparently went down: the Politico reporter called Quayle at his house around 6 a.m. It’s an unlisted number but because Quayle’s wife’s father was in the hospital that morning, Quayle answered the phone.
The reporter asked Quayle if he was involved with founding The Dirty. He said no. The followup question asked if he was involved at all. Still thinking the reporter was referring to the founding of the Web site, Quayle answered no again. At no point did the reporter ask the candidate if he had written for the Web site.
Now, again, I respect King, and one shouldn’t be glib about the work of a serious reporter. But this is bullshit.
Again, here’s the original Politico passage:
“I did not have a role in founding that site,” Quayle, a lawyer who runs a small Scottsdale investment firm, told POLITICO in an interview Tuesday morning when asked whether he was one of the original contributors to the sex-themed site.
“I was not involved in the site,” he said when pressed about whether he had any role.
You know what happened; the reporter sensed that Quayle was choosing his words carefully. She said, “Did you have any role?” He replied, “I was not involved with the site” — which was, plainly, a lie.
What part of “did you have any role” does King not understand?
The reason I think King is carrying Quayle’s water is that he, like the Quayle campaign, is trying to split hairs on an ancillary issue.
The point is that Quayle was running around with folks putting up an ultraskanky web site. Now he’s a family-values Republican. The main issue is hypocrisy. This wasn’t ten or fifteen years ago. It was three years ago.
Then when questioned about it he lied. That’s another thing that Republicans are supposed to be all so moral about.
Then Quayle (and King) play the sympathy card, that Quayle was worried about his father-in-law and groggily picked up the phone at 6 a.m.
But he obviously had the presence of mind to try to finesse the issue in Clintonian fashion instead of just answering the question truthfully.
He could have said, “Oh, yeah, I used to know Nik Ritchie. I wrote some things for his web site but that’s it.”
A reporter who wasn’t spinning things Quayle’s way would a) bring up the hypocrisy; b) note that at the very least Quayle was being a weasel, at the worst lying, and c) note, as PHXated has consistently, that Quayle has been lying again when he says his story has been consistent.
… not to mention the fact that Quayle’s probably still lying when he says he wasn’t Brock Landers (why would Nik Ritchie make that up?), and that he was lying some more when he said he just posted “comments” on the site, and that he was lying some more when he told Politico that he hadn’t introduced the Dirty Scottsdale guy to some lawyers … and evaded the question when reporters asked him specifics about what he did do for the site:
“What kind of comments?” the reporter asked.
“This is four years ago,” Quayle replied. “This is hilarious this is being brought up. … This is a smear. This is a smear on me from a smear website being pushed by a smear campaign.”
3:40 PM
New Times on Ben Quayle: Does James King heart Ben Quayle a little too much?
The paper’s James King profiles the candidate at length. There’s a very funny graphic, by Jamie Peachey, that portrays Quayle as the 40-year-old virgin:
The story, while not a puff piece, lets Quayle off the hook on a couple of issues, notably the Dirty Scottsdale tale.
Besides being a hypocrite by being a family-values Republican with a history of working for a skanky, woman-hating web site, Quayle lied about it when he was first asked.
New Times is a good paper and King is one of its typically strong reporters.
But this doesn’t wash:
[I]t turns out that Quayle didn’t lie — he just didn’t volunteer information about his association with Dirty Scottsdale.
The Politico reporter who first called Quayle didn’t ask him whether he had written for the Web site. She asked if he was involved in the founding of The Dirty, to which Quayle answered no.
The reporter’s next question was, “You had nothing to do with it?” Quayle contends he thought the reporter still was referring to the establishment of The Dirty and answered no again.
[…]
But the damage was done. The claim that he initially lied about his involvement made the front page of the New York Times.
That’s plainly total bullshit.
Here’s the original Politico passage:
“I did not have a role in founding that site,” Quayle, a lawyer who runs a small Scottsdale investment firm, told POLITICO in an interview Tuesday morning when asked whether he was one of the original contributors to the sex-themed site.
“I was not involved in the site,” he said when pressed about whether he had any role.
In other words, Quayle tried to weasel around the question by framing his first answer carefully. (Note how the reporter includes her original question.)
But then, of course, she pressed him, and he specifically said he wasn’t involved in the site, when asked if he had any role.
It’s one thing to try to lie when asked a question like that, and it’s another level of deceit to try to pretend that your lie had been successful when it plainly hadn’t. That’s what Quayle’s been doing since.
King has it entirely wrong and should correct the story. Quayle plainly lied.
I think it’s fair to beat up on King about this because he’s given Quayle a pass as well on his cheesy little family mailer in which he posed with two little girls, even though he doesn’t have kids.
And finally, Quayle is never asked about his right-wing views.
Among other things, King could have asked him about his position on abortion, and specifically to what extent he would criminalize it if he had the chance.
He could also have asked him about the astate’s medical marijuana initiative—and whether he’d ever tried it himself.
11:47 AM
1Live-blogging the Ben Quayle/Jon Hulburd debate
It’s over.
Simons says the tape will be up on the KAET web site, but it’s not there yet.
I assume it will be on this page.
PHXated will post when it becomes available.
Incredibly, it’s almost over. Closing statements. Schoen goes on some more about manufacturing jobs.
Quayle says he wants to “bend the cost care curve down” in health care. Yeah, that’s always been a big GOP priority. He says he’ll work to repeal the health care bill.
Hulburd says repealing health care is a fairy tale. He says he’s going to go back and act like legislators.
Will Quayle kick the new kids on the health care rolls off? Hulburd says he likes part of the bill, not other parts.
Elect someone who will deal with this as an adult, he says. Hard to argue with that.
Simons asks about immigration reform. A bad question: “Is it needed, how do you do it?”
Quayle wants “a barrier from the Pacific to the Gulf.” He natters on about drug cartels. He wont' talk about reform until “we secure the border.”
Hulburd tries to attack Quayle from the right on this, saying that Quayle has been arguing for a guest worker program. Quayle says only after the border is secured.
Hulburd hits Quayle hard; he notes Quayle’s getting a lot of his money from Cerebrus capital.
Quayle says Hulburd’s getting money from a union. Hulburd says he’ll give back his $10K in union contributions if Quayle gives back the $80K he got from Cerebrus.
Tarp was not the way to go, Quayle says. He says the banks were that much in trouble.
Jesus these guys are bush league. Tarp was a Bush initiative supported by both parties and economists on both sides.
Hulburd says Tarp was a terrible idea, a disaster. Simons says, so should we have let the fire burn itself out? He says yes, the rich people got bailed out by the Titanic. He’s wrong.
Schoen notes than Greenspan has said you can’t cut taxes with borrowed money. He says the tax cuts are jsut going to blow out the deficit. He should be asking both Quayle and Hulburd to address that issue.
Tom Schoen
Simons asks a hard question of Quayle: Business, he notes, aren’t putting their money to work; they husbanding it, buying back shares and the like.
He babbles in response, not answering the question. None of it makes sense.
Simon turns to Schoen, who says he was once sued for defamation, too. I don’t think he needed to volunteer that. But he seems not to be an idiot on the economy.
Hulburd sounds good on the economy too. Even under Simons questioning he sticks to his support for extending the Bush tax cuts.
Quayle keep[s nattering on about “uncertainty.”
(This is a bullshit Republican talking point. Rich people had certainty. They knew their tax cuts were going to end this year; the only uncertainty was whether they could con Congress isn’t extending them.)
Quayle says Hulburd was using blatant lies in ads. When asked, Quayle says it was a lie that he’d pretended to have kids in a mailer. (Which he did.) Hulburd notes that it wasn’t a lie.
The moderator keeps hitting Hulburd, not Quayle. “He says he’s regrets the association,” he says to Hulburd. “Why isn’t that good enough?”
Jesus.
Quayle says he’s been tested in the primary. He says he’s been candid the whole time. (He hasn’t.) He has a deer in the headlights look.
He attacks Hulburd for having been sued for defamation and fraud. Hulburd says the suits were nuisance suits and dismissed with prejudice.
Quayle says something stupid, too: “It didn’t go through the proper trial.” He tries to make it sound suspicious. Well, if they were dismissed, they wouldn’t have “gone through the proper trial” … because they were dismissed.
The moderator asks a dumb question of Hulburd: Why harp on Quayle and Dirty Scottsdale? Hulburd says because character matters.
To that question, Quayle says it’s because he’s going to go to D.C. and fight for the people. Jesus. He says watching actions in D.C. the last year and a half is the best experience anyone could have.
Moderator Simons asked Hulburd why he’s qualified. Hulburd says it’s a fair question, and notes his social, business and personal experience. He stresses he work as a lawyer and family man and volunteer work for Children’s Hospital.
Schoen, the libertarian, shows a chart, demonstrating the decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs.
Hulburd begins, and goes on the attack. He ridicules Qualye for an ad with a wildly inaccurate ad about the federal deficit and goes after him for his involvement in Dirty Scottsdale.
Quayle says it’s “one of the most important elections in the country’s history.”
Quayle tries to attack Obama and the health care initiative.
It’s starting. An “open exchange of ideas,” moderator Ted Simons says. Interruptions are allowed. there’s a libertarian there, too, Michael Schoen, a former prosecutor.
The Ben Quayle-Jon Hulburd debate is scheduled to last for an absurd 30 minutes.
It will be broadcast on Phoenix’s public TV station, channel 8, KAET.
Stay tunes for live-blogging when it begins at 7 p.m. PDT.
(Out-of-state readers please note Arizona doesn’t recognize daylight savings time, it being a comminist plot of some sort, and is a consequence operating currently in the Pacific time zone.)
PHXated’s complete coverage of the life and times of Little Benny Quayle is here.
The complete Brock Landers story is here.
PHXated’s interview with Jon Hulburd is here.
The weird little story about whatever it is that Ben Quayle’s wife does is here.
Braham Resnik to Ben Quayle: “What have you ever done to ‘knock the hell’ out of anything?”.
6:49 PM
The Hulburd-Quayle debate is tonight
It will air at 7 on channel 8.
Incredibly, the Quayle campaign agreed only to a 30-minute session.
The Hulburd campaign says Quayle turned down an offer for a prime-time debate from channel 12, the NBC affiliate.
The Arizona Republic, either through complete incompetence or as part of a campaign to help Ben Quayle ascend to office with as little public examination as possible, has no mention of it that I can find on its web site.
The session is being taped at 4 this afternoon. Hulburd’s campaign manager, Ruben Alonzo, will be tweeting from the session, which is closed to the public. His handle is @ralonzo.
3:15 PM
UPDATE: What's up with the Arizona House races?
At 538.com, Nate Silver says …
… That Schweikert has a 75.7 percent chance in knocking Mitchell out of his seat. Recent polls show Mitchell holding his own, but the site doesn’t give much credence to them. Details here.
… That Ben Quayle has a 97.7 percent chance of beating Jon Hulburd. Details here.
… and that Giffords has a 58 percent chance of winning over Jesse Kelly. Details here.
Real Clear Politics gives Ben Quayle Shadegg’s seat over Jon Hulburd in the third district.
In the fifth, it says David Schweikert has the edge over Democratic incumbent Harry Mitchell.
It says the first (Paul Gosar vs. Dem. incumbent Ann Kirkpatrick) and the eighth (Jesse Kelly vs. Dem. incumbent Gabrielle Giffords) are tossups.
Of these, the most portentous is the Mitchell race, because the site has recently downgraded his chances:
Mitchell faces the same problem that many first- and second- term Democrats face: The wind is no longer at their backs and a Democratic administration has forced them to cast votes in favor of liberal policies that never would have come up under a Republican president. Mitchell will face off again his 2008 opponent, David Schweikert. Schweikert held Mitchell to 53 percent of the vote in 2008, and this is a very different year than 2008.
12:27 PM
Jon Hulburd's first TV commercial
Hulburd is the conservative Democrat running for the 3rd district Congressional seat being vacated by John Shadegg.
His first TV commercial continues to hammer on Dan Quayle for everything you’d expect.
2:53 PM
New Times smacks Jon Hulburd
One of the weekly’s main political writers, John James King*, goes after Hulburd for a new ad that smacks his opponent, Little Benny Quayle, for “lying” about having kids in a campaign ad.
The Quayle campaign ad story is interesting. (It’s chronicled by PHXated here.)
His campaign sent out a mailing with a shot of Quayle cuddling two cute little girls; the legend said “A NEW GENERATION.”
In the copy below, we read: “Tiffany [his wife] and I live in this district and are going to raise our family here.”
Now, King’s not the only smart person I know who thinks Quayle is being unfairly hit on this issue.
But I don’t.
The intent of the mailer is plain. Two little girls … “raise our family.” Of course that’s the message the mailer was trying to get across.
And there are other slightly skeevy things the Quayle campaign does to protect his flank on this issue.
One of his other TV ads had Quayle saying, “I love Arizona. I was raised right”—a not-so-subtle attempt to get the idea across that he was “raised” in “Arizona,” when he wasn’t.
This is slightly tangential, but that line I kept reading about Quayle’s wife “managing a Fortune 500 company”—that was skeevy too.
And we never hear what Quayle does, because it’s true—he has had four or five different jobs in his undistinguished career, and that’s not counting his time writing for a porny web site, which he did lie about.
King’s right that Hulburd does take a lot of Republican positions, but this a benightedly dumb district—which sent Shadegg to Congress for years, and might do the same for the unqualified Quayle.
And as PHXated noted before, Hulburd is a smart guy with a solid background on most of the issues. How can you begrudge a guy for not embarking on a suicide mission?
Previously in PHXated:
The complete Dirty Scottsdale tale.
So … what exactly does Ben Quayle’s wife do?.
How the Arizona Republic took a dive on the tawdry Ben Quayle/Dirty Scottsdale story.
- PHXated misspelled King’s name originally. Apologies.
8:02 AM
Did Ben Quayle get his facts wrong?
It certainly seems like it. The Jon Hulburd campaign is sending around the video below, which shows Quayle nattering on about debt and government spending.
In it, he says:
“Government in America is today spending well over 14.5 trillion dollars a year. and since government can’t possibly collect that much money from the people, it’s loading massive debt on the backs of the next generation, so politicians can go on spending your money on their agenda.”
It certainly seems as if the Hulburd campaign is right, and that Quayle misstated the size of the budget; it’s only about $3.5 trillion.
The Hulburd folks say Quayle pulled the ad after about an hour on You Tube. I emailed the Quayle campaign’s PR person and will post her reply when I get it.
Here’s the ad:
The really irritating thing about the spot isn’t the mistake.
It’s the phony concern about debt. There are myriad charts out there—here’s a good one—detailing how the debt has not just risen but risen astronomically under Republican presidents and declined under Democratic ones.
This Wikipedia page, for example, it shows how since the Kennedy Era all Democratic presidents have reduced the debt and GOP ones have increased it—with the exception of the first Nixon term.
And in most cases the increase was massive: An average of more than twelve percent a year.
8:20 AM
A new Jon Hulburd attack ad on Ben Quayle
The focus of the Hulburd campaign now seems pretty clear: Running as Republican as possible.
This way, Hulburd can hit Ben Quayle hard on his skanky background and at the same time protect his political flank in the right-leaning third district.
PHXated disagrees with Hulburd’s economic positions, but it’s hard to begrudge him them in this district—previously represented by the Neanderthal John Shadegg— particularly if it’s a way to keep Quayle out of the seat.
The ad features Hulburd’s wife, who is touted as the head of a group called “Republicans for Hulburd.”
“I’m worried that Ben Quayle doesn’t have the life experiences or the maturity to take on Washington,” she says.
Hulburd was on Greta VanSusteren’s show on Fox a couple of weeks back. You can see her recite his tax positions and ask, “Are you running as a Republican or a Democrat?”
The campaign has a list of GOPers supporting Hulburd here.
Previously in PHXated:
The complete Dirty Scottsdale tale.
So … what exactly does Ben Quayle’s wife do?.
How the Arizona Republic took a dive on the tawdry Ben Quayle/Dirty Scottsdale story.
11:37 AM
Doonesbury on Little Benny Quayle
(Click on the image for the full Sunday strip)
8:26 AM
Braham Resnik to Ben Quayle: "What have you ever done to 'knock the hell' out of anything?"
Ben Quayle on 12 News' “Sunday Square Off.” Resnik’s questioning is tough, and it’s worth watching.
We learn:
Quayle’s had five jobs in eight years, and couldn’t cite an example of anything he’d “knocked the hell out of.”
Won’t give back his large contributions from Cerebrus, his father’s company, which got a $4 billion bailout from George Bush.
And for the first time Quayle says he “regrets” writing for DirtyScottsdale.com, though he still lies once or twice about his involvement with it to keep his run going.
8:18 AM
Ben Quayle: There will be debates!
Ben Quayle’s spokesperson, Megan Rose, tells PHXated that the candidate will debate Democrat Jon Hulburd.
“Right now we are just working out dates and schedules,” she said.
We mentioned that the Hulburd campaign has been criticizing the Quayle campaign for not agreeing to debates thus far.
“It’s nothing he’s running from. We’ve got a whole lot of offers.”
How many debates is the campaign going to do? we asked.
“We don’t know, but I would think there will be at least two,” she said.
UPDATE: Hulburd’s campaign manager, Josh Abner, tells PHXated, “We haven’t heard anything from them. It’s news to us.”
Tonight, meanwhile, Quayle’s father, the former vice president, is holding a fundraiser for Quayle and to other local GOP congressional candidates in his Paradise Valley home.
Special guest: House minority leader John Boehner.
From Politico:
Dentist Paul Gosar, running against Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in the 1st, sent out an invitation Monday inviting supporters to the fundraiser, which will also benefit 5th District nominee Dave Schweikert in his race against Rep. Harry Mitchell.
PHXated’s complete Ben Quayle coverage is here.
11:44 AM
Jon Hulburd on Ben Quayle's "theater of the absurd"
The Hulburd campaign held a conference call with local bloggers this a.m.
Hulburd came across as very knowledgable. He spoke calmly and with authority, and with a fairly high level of granularity about almost every issue.
On a couple of subjects—extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and ending the estate tax—his positions are indistinguishable from the Republican economic policies that nearly destroyed the country. (And that have beggared Arizona.)
When pressed on these points by the largely liberal contingent on the phone, he stood his ground.
But one most other issues he came across as fairly sane: He was pro choice; in favor of ending don’t ask don’t tell; he supported the cap and trade initiative; he advocated green and alternative energy policies, particularly for how they could help improve Arizona’s economy.
On trade he was more moderate, saying he was for “fair trade,” not “free trade.”
The highlights, however, were when he went after his opponent, Ben Quayle.
On Quayle’s “Obama is the worst president in history” ad:
“Part of my response has been muted out there. … I don’t want to be in a position of making this a big issue, because it plays into stupid Ben Quayle and his stupid ad.
“There are twelve different reasons it’s not just factually wrong but that it’s the wrong messenger, even if you’re on the right.
“Everything about it, visually and scripted, is repugnant and silly. It’s a theater of the absurd.”
But he noted that the ad might have motivated voters in the primary and that his campaign was on the lookout for the next similar gambit.
Asked about Quayle’s weaknesses, Hulburd offered a long assessment.
Specifically setting aside Quayle’s involvement with the skanky Dirty Scottsdale web site, Hulburd said Quayle was vulnerable in three areas: Professional, political and social.
“The social stuff. He’s barely been here. As a father of five I’d like to see him spend a couple of years juggling school schedules and changing diapers and doing what regular people have to do.
“He has no life experiences both in the Valley or elsewhere that I can tell you about that make me think the guy gets it.
“From the professional standpoint, I don’t think one year at Snell & Wilmer [a law firm at which Quayle was an associate] qualifies him for anything…. And what has he done for the community? His bio is thin as a reed …
“He’s done very very little if anything as far as community works.
“And then this political piece is fascinating. [The Vernon Parker campaign] was trying to push him as an empty suit. I think that’s what he is. … and it galls me that he could simply come in here and so cavalierly pick up this very very important seat.
“If I scrabble and work hard and get it, we all know if I get it I’ll be under attack instantly. If he gets it he’s there until he’s our next senator.”
Hulburd was asked about Quayle’s carpetbagger status.
“He’s making a big deal about it the wrong way. He should do what I do, which is say that like a lot of you I come from somewhere else and move on. [Hulburd has actually been in the valley for nearly three decades.]
“And what he does is say he’s fourth generation and that he has all these amazing ties in the valley, which is a load of shit.
“He bought a house in the district last December.
“And a month later his new congressman, John Shadegg, announces he’s getting out, and a month after that he gets in, and a month after that he gets married.
“And in that three- or four-month period, if I were 33 years old my head would explode. It would change your world.
“He has no ties to District three, it’s silly.”
Previously in PHXated:
The complete Dirty Scottsdale tale.
So … what exactly does Ben Quayle’s wife do?.
How the Arizona Republic took a dive on the tawdry Ben Quayle/Dirty Scottsdale story.
1:04 PM
Jon Hulburd goes on the attack against Ben Quayle
This is a radio spot, with images added for You Tube viewing, run by the Hulburd campaign on local Christian stations.
“I’ve read that congressional candidate Ben Quayle helped create one of the most offensive websites I’ve ever seen,” a woman says in the ad, currently running on three Christian radio stations and a Phoenix conservative talk radio station. “The site promotes drugs and prostitution, is filled with meanness and foul language, humiliates women and even mocks people with Down syndrome.”
7:18 AM
Doug MacEachern on Jesse Kelly: "A really, really angry guy."
The Arizona Republic’s Doug MacEachern comes to not bury Little Benny Quayle, but to praise him.
MacEachern’s argument: Quayle’s not a complete sociopath, like the guy the GOP nominated to run against Gabrielle Giffords in the eighth Congressional District.
(The district includes most of Tucson and extends to cover the southeast corner of the state.)
Jesse Kelly is a rabid former marine who unexpectedly knocked out establishment candidate Jonathan Paton, making life considerably easier for Giffords in a tough re-election campaign.
Kelly visited the Republic’s editorial board the other day, and in MacEachern’s telling he had a lot to say:
I met Kelly in an Editorial Board meeting. Honorable fellow: war veteran, like all the district’s GOP candidates. Indeed, he was a Marine combat platoon leader, the most dangerous job on earth. He is an honest conservative. And a really, really angry guy.
When asked about priorities, he gave an answer that, while perfectly suitable for a former Marine officer, it seemed a bit over the top for a prospective member of Congress: “We’ve got to kill all members of radical Islam.”
And, when asked if he could work with Democrats in Congress: “I hope there’s no Democrats left in Congress when I get there.”
Look, I like shock theater, too. And I’ve been known to be a bit edgy at times. But Kelly is that rare conservative who takes politics so personally that he has morphed into his worst enemy. Like far-left liberals, he doesn’t believe his political opponents are merely wrong; they’re evil: “I think liberals are destroying the nation. We had better go fight them in Washington before they destroy our children’s future.”
About Quayle, MacEachern continues the Republic’s odd insistence on mentioning at least once a day the scandal it did not tell readers about during the primary campaign, namely Quayle’s cheesy past writing for an ultraskanky Scottsdale nightlife web site.
That sordid tale is told in its entirety here.
PHXated’s complete Ben Quayle archive is here.
7:46 AM
Jon Hulburd: I want five debates with Brock Landers!
The democratic challenger to Young Benny Quayle is Jon Hulburd.
He ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. The third congressonal district is solidly red, but he may have a chance given the young Quayle’s vulnerabilities.
He talks to ABC 15’s Dave Biscobing here:
“This election is now between Jon Hulburd and Brock Landers,” said a statement released by his campaign hours after the primary ended.
It’s a shot at Quayle, who’s accused of writing under the pseudonym “Brock Landers” on a racy blog called DirtyScottsdale.com a few years ago.
The statement continues: “It’s between a young man who fabricated a family, degraded women, and then tried to lie about it, and a small businessman and father of five who has been dedicated to his community. These concerns were raised by Republicans during the primary and at least 77% of Republican voters were unhappy with Ben Quayle’s response.”
Hulburd has unsuccessfully run for office in the past, but based on Quayle’s own history, political experts believe the Democrat could steal the seat in the traditionally Republican district.
And Hulburd’s campaign also isn’t waiting to further challenge Quayle, asking the GOP candidate to square off in five debates.
The video:
11:38 AM
Laurie Roberts lays out the Ben Quayle/Brock Landers story in all its porny glory
Yesterday, the Arizona Republic finally vouchsafed to its print clientele an overview of Ben Quayle’s sordid past associations with the ultraskanky web site Dirty Scottsdale.
This came after the election he was running in, but whatever.
Today Laurie Roberts, on whom we have a journalistic crush, finally limns the story the way the paper should have from the start:
So, to recap:.
He denied writing for the website, then he admitted writing for the website, saying he posted a handful of “fictional satirical comments.”
He denied that he is Brock Landers but he hasn’t denied writing under the name Brock Landers.
And he couldn’t recall whether he introduced Karamian to a lawyer for purposes of incorporating the website, but then later admitted that he hooked them up.
Now he says he’s “been consistent from the very beginning on this issue.”
7:47 AM
UPDATE: TheDirty.com libel suit
The AP reported yesterday that a Cinncinnati cheerleader had won a default libel suit against the proprietor of a site called “the Dirt.com.”
The Arizona Republic reported that as a judgment against the site we all know as TheDirty.com, the place where Young Benny Quayle undertook some of his early nightlife epistolary efforts.
PHXated repeated the news (see orignal post below), even correcting the AP’s error.
Turns out the story was half right in about three different ways.
TheDirty is the site that said the cheerleader had VD. But the suit was filed against a different site, TheDirt.com, which ignored it and got a default judgment of $11 million against it. Hilarity has presumably ensued.
Politico has the story here.
It contains these entertaining passages from Eric Deters, the plaintiff’s attorney, about TheDirty.com founder and Quayle literary amanuensis Nik Richie:
“We’re still going to serve that S.O.B. personally,” Deters said of Richie. “I’m going to make that dirty, rotten, mean, vermin bastard pay. He’s a piece of dirt.”
When asked what he thought about Quayle blogging for Dirty Scottsdale, Deters – who has been following national media coverage of the political novice – called it “absolutely disgraceful.”
“He ought to be ashamed of himself,” Deters said “He’s another lying little weasel politician. That’s not slander; that is my opinion.”
Updates as they happen.
The original post:
One of the grimier things about TheDirty.com, the web site Ben Quayle wrote for and helped found, is now hateful many of its postings are.
As we’ve mentioned before, they basically come down to “she has VD.”
The practice seems to have cost the site and its founder, Hooman Karamian, who goes by the name Nik Ritchie, $11 million.
From the AP:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A gossip website has been hit with an $11 million judgment for libel and slander after posting false accusations about a Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader.
The judgment against Dirty World Entertainment Recordings, which runs the site Thedirt.com [sic], came Thursday after the site did not respond to a lawsuit brought by Sarah Jones. The high school teacher’s picture was posted on the site along with an accusation she had been exposed to two venereal diseases.
Richie is the guy who told Politico that Quayle had helped him get the site going and had written for it under the name Brock Landers.
10:40 AM
Newsflash: Arizona Republic readers learn about Ben Quayle's porny alter ego
In its campaign wrap-up story today, the Arizona Republic tells its readers that Ben Quayle might not be the ideal GOP candidate to replace John Shadegg.
Why?
Well, turns out the sanctimonious family-values candidate used to write for, and palled around with the founder of, a sleazy web site in Scottsdale.
His nom de skank was Brock Landers, the name of a porn actor in Boogie Nights.
As PHXated has noted here and here, while the story has been a national news staple for the past two week, the Arizona Republic has apparently never mentioned it in its news pages.
(We have yet to find an actual printed story in which this was mentioned; the paper has run a couple of wire stories on the web site. It certainly has not done what you’d expect, which is routinely make reference to an ongoing scandal in a major local political campaign.)
Until today, that is… two days after the election he was running in.
11:14 PM
Little Benny Quayle on Greta Van Susteren
He proposes that Congress’s salaries be cut if it doesn’t reduce the budget.
“They have these incentives in the private sector and they work very well,” he says, insipidly.
Van Susteren, clearly skeptical, does her best to pin him down on the Dirty Scottsdale scandal.
Quayle has yet to answer any question about his involvement with the site clearly.
10:42 PM
What exactly does Ben Quayle's wife do?
From Young Benny Quayle’s campaign web site:
Ben is married to Tiffany Crane Quayle, an Arizona State University graduate. Tiffany manages Insight Enterprises (an Arizona based Fortune 500 company) for CA and is very active in the Phoenix Women’s Board of the Steele Children’s Research Center.
Now, the bio caught our eye because it’s odd to say someone “manages” a Fortune 500 company. It’s not really a business term on that level.
You “manage” a 7-11.
Fortune 500 companies have directors, or CEOs, or vice presidents, right?
And what does it mean to say someone manages a company for “CA”? She lives in Arizona, right? Does she work in California? Could she head up Insight’s California office, maybe?
And what in the hell is Insight Enterprises?
Turns out it’s not precisely on the Fortune 500, but whatever.
Here’s the company’s corporate profile:
Insight Enterprises, Inc. (Insight) is a provider of information technology (IT) hardware, software and services to small, medium and large businesses and public sector institutions in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.
Sounds pretty important.
Odd, though, that someone who “manages” a “Fortune 500 company” has such a small internet footprint. You don’t find much info on the internets about Tiffany Crane Quayle.
It takes some prowling around before you discover something interesting.
Tiffany Quayle doesn’t work for Insight Enterprises.
She works for a company that until recently was called Computer Associates and is now called …
… CA.
Here’s its profile:
CA, Inc. (CA) is an independent enterprise information technology (IT) software and service company with capabilities across IT environments from mainframe and physical to virtual and cloud. CA develops and delivers software and services that help organizations to manage and secure their IT infrastructures and deliver flexible IT services. CA addresses most of the components of the computing environment, including people, information, processes, systems, networks, applications and databases, regardless of the hardware or software customers are using. It has a portfolio of software products that address its customers' needs, with a specific focus on service management and assurance, project and portfolio management and security (identity and access management). It delivers its products on-premise, or for certain products, via software-as-a-service
Basically, CA does outsourced computer software sales for Insight, in the same way another company might do its catering, or landscaping.
Here’s what Quayle herself says she does on LinkedIn:
I actually left CA (and the world of the “big corporation”) to work for a small start up in the bay area…which was an unbelievable learning experience. It also lead me to a unique opportunity to work for VMware. I would have stayed at VMware for years if CA hadn’t recruited me back for a channel sales position. Now that I’m in sales, I know it’s where I’m going to stay.
Tiffany Quayle’s Specialties:
IT Sales & Marketing – specifically in the channel…even more specifically, on the LAR side of the channel.
If you bring coffee in to Steve Jobs' office, you don’t “manage Apple, a Fortune 500 company, for Starbucks.”
You’re a barista.
PHXated has a friend in Chicago who works for AT&T. One of his clients is Walgreens. He doesn’t “manage Walgreens, a Fortune 500 company.”
He just sells them phones. (It’s a little more complicated than that, but still.)
What does Tiffany Quayle do? She sells computer software, basically making sure Insight is up to date on its Microsoft Office licenses.
It’s a little more complicated than that, but still.
For free, PHXated offers this quick resume rewrite for the distaff Quayle:
“Tiffany Crane Quayle does corporate computer software sales for CA, formerly Computer Associates. Her client in Arizona is Insight Enterprises, a Fortune 1000 company.”
The complete PHXated Ben Quayle archive.
8:57 AM
Ben Quayle cancelled his own victory party
From Politico:
After a cascade of accusations and ever-shifting denials that he wrote for a raunchy website under the name of a fictional porn star, it seemed even Ben Quayle thought he was going to lose a 10-way Republican primary in Arizona.
Quayle, the son of former Vice President Dan Quayle, went so far as to cancel a victory party he had planned to hold Tuesday night to watch the returns in the race for the GOP nod to replace retiring Rep. John Shadegg in the 3rd District.
6:34 AM
The curious incident of the Quayle that didn't, uh, chirp in the Arizona Republic
It was one of the more noted political antics of this last primary cycle:
Ben Quayle, the son of a notorious former vice president and now a family values Congressional candidate, was a few years ago a writer for an ultra-skanky nightlife web site, then called DirtyScottsdale and now called TheDirty.com.
As an indication of the national interest in the story, Politico followed it intensely.
… and treated the incident prominently in its wrap-up today as well.
The revelation was compounded by the callow Quayle’s handling of it.
He lied at first, denying any involvement.
Then he reversed himself, admitting he had written for the site, and to this day has kept the story alive by not coming clean entirely, as the latest Politico story makes clear:
At first, Quayle denied ever writing for the site, telling POLITICO “I was not involved in the site.” Then he backtracked and admitted to writing under a pseudonym, though he denies Richie’s accusation that he wrote as Brock Landers, a reference to a fictional porn star in the 1990s film “Boogie Nights.”
(It makes no sense for him to admit to writing for the site but not under the pseudonym.)
Here’s my question:
Did the Arizona Republic ever mention the scandal in the paper?
Online, the paper reprinted the first two Politico stories.
But I never saw, and can’t find online, an actual Republic story that detailed the incident for readers.
Am I wrong?
If I did in fact miss one mention of it in print, it still begs the question of why it wasn’t in every story the paper ran that mentioned Quayle.
With the Republic, you never know.
It could have been a decree from on high.
Or it could just be incompetence.
6:36 PM
Confidential to Ben Quayle: On Wednesday, give us a call!
Your big primary is Tuesday. You might be the GOP nominee in the race to replace John Shadegg in Arizona’s 3rd congressional district.
We have to be honest. We hope you win.
The primary, that is.
Last week it was revealed you used to hell around Scottsdale with the guy who founded Dirty Scottsdale.com, a skanky nightlife web site now morphed into The Dirty.com.
You used to write for the site under the name Brock Landers, a man embarked on an epic quest for Scottsdale’s hottest foxiest chick or somesuch, while all around you the site posted porny photos of club denizens with a lot of speculation about venereal diseases.
A classy operation!
This was two or three years ago.
Now all of a sudden you’re a family values Republican who borrows other peoples' kids so you look like a family man.
Anyway, like we said we hope you win, because you’d be vulnerable in the general.
But, here’s the deal.
The Dirty.com has really taken off. You seem to be a web guy with a magic touch.
And be honest: Is the search for Scottsdale’s hottest chick really over?
We think you’re the guy who can help find her—and help PHXated find its groove.
So, like we said, we hope you win on Tuesday.
But if not .. on Wednesday, drop us a line!
The complete Ben Quayle story is here.
5:01 PM
The complete Ben Quayle/Brock Landers links list!
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a wee little web site, Dirty Scottsdale.
On the site, folks sent in pics of marginal nightlife people, to which was paired commentary distinguished as much by its grammatical uncertainty as its utterly skanky content—generally asseverations about venereal disease and the like.
One of its early noted contributors was a guy named Brock Landers.
Landers was a man on a mission, namely to find Scottsdale’s First Foxy Chick.
This was in 2007.
Flash forward three years. Dirty Scottsdale is now a network of sites, all published under the name of The Dirty.
And meanwhile, a young man named Little Benny Quayle decides to run for Congress. This is a venue open to him if not too many other folks of his fairly undistinguished life work because he happens to be the son of a former vice president of the United States.
All is going well (well, fairly well), until a bombshell drops in a story on a national political web site.
The story says young Quayle had been a writer for Dirty Scotsdale, under the name “Brock.”
In the story, Quayle denied that it was he!
Politico: Quayle denies link to Scottsdale site
“I was not involved in the site,” Quayle said.
But the story quoted the site’s founder, Nik Richie, who would seem to have been in a position to know, saying that Quayle had posted eight to ten times on the blog.
Soon, he weighed in with his version of events on The Dirty.
The Dirty: I Think It is Time ….
He wrote:
Since the beginning (DirtyScottsdale.com) three years ago, I have gotten the same question from the DIRTY ARMY from all over the world: “Who is Brock from the Dirty Celeb Brock’s Chick?”
I have kept it a secret until right now… the mystery man is Ben Quayle aka Brock Landers, the son of Vice President Dan Quayle. If you are a DIRTY ARMY Republican, vote for Ben Quayle because he was one of the original creators of DirtyScottsdale.com which evolved into TheDirty.com.
Phoenix’s 12 News then ran this report, which features Quayle changing his story, saying:
“I just posted comments to try to drive some traffic."
KPNX 12 News: Quayle linked to thedirty.com: Congressional candidate was trying to help out
That got Politico back into the action.
Politico: Ben Quayle changes story on web site
The site took an uncharacteristically harsh tone with the political neophyte:
Ben Quayle had a hard time getting his story straight Tuesday….
And not just about writing for the site:
Richie also told POLITICO that Quayle introduced him to attorneys at the Phoenix law firm where he worked, Snell & Wilmer, so his Internet site could incorporate. But Quayle told POLITICO Tuesday morning that he couldn’t recall whether he had made the introduction.
Later in the day, however, Quayle confirmed to several Phoenix TV stations that he introduced Richie to an intellectual property attorney at Snell & Wilmer.
“He wanted an IP attorney, and I referred him to one,” Quayle told 12News. “I don’t know if they met or not.”
The story also said that “Brock”’s full name was “Brock Landers.”
At this point, the guy who founded Dirty Scottsdale and the Dirty.com is getting mad that Quayle is denying his association.
He responds:
The Dirty: Ben Quayle is Brock Landers
Richie links to what he says is some of Quayle/Landers' best work:
The Dirty: Brock’s Chick
Wondering where Quayle got the name Brock Landers?
Meanwhile, Politico gleefully stays on the story:
Politico: Quayle’s bump on road to Congress
Politico: Quayle Lashes out at political foes
Says Quayle:
“It is amazing that the media will take a casual acquaintance and turn it into something tawdry, taking the word of a smut peddler at face value."
New York Times op-ed columnist Gail Collins takes a few swipes at Quayle, too.
NYT: More American Idols:
Consider Ben Quayle, the son of the former vice president. He’s running for Congress in Arizona. He’s been accused of both using a phony family in his campaign pictures and helping to found a local porn site. In response, he’s come up with a new ad in which he announces that Barack Obama is the “worst president in history,” swiftly bemoans “drug cartels in Mexico, tax cartels in D.C.” and concludes that “somebody has to go to Washington and knock the hell out of the place.”
Talk about a clear agenda for change. Although Quayle does show a terrible disrespect for the records of Warren Harding and James Buchanan.
And more locally, the right-wing blogger Greg Patterson says the game might be over for Young Benny Quayle.
Espresso Pundit: If this is true then Ben Quayle has no chance of going to Congress…:
The site is awful and if it’s true that Quayle is one of the founders and authors then his political career is over.
His prediction:
If it’s too late and Quayle’s name and money let him squeak through the primary then he will get crushed by CD 3 Democratic nominee Jon Hulburd (who will go on to be crushed in 2012 by Jim Waring or Dean Martin).
To distract attention, Quayle reveals himself as a noted presidential historian, contending, in a new TV commercial, that “Barack Obama is the worst president in history”:
Everyone chuckles for a day, and then goes back to asking about Dirty Scottsdale.
Meanwhile, on the national level, Quayle keeps lying. He tells ABCnews.com, too, that he only knew Richie through referring him to a lawyer.
ABC News: Ben Quayle Denies Blogging for Racy Website.
“I am not Brock Landers,” Quayle says.
Then, on Friday, Quayle lied a few more times on CNN’s John King show.
Amusingly, King is less interested in Dirty Scottsdale than he is in Quayle’s recent contentions about Obama. (“He’s only been in office eighteen months!”)
CNN: John King USA.
“I’ve been consistent with my story from the beginning”
“I had no affiliation with that website.”
Displaying, perhaps, his father’s way with handling a gaffe, Quayle, incredibly, keeps denying he was Brock Landers to the Associated Press:
AP: Like father, like son? Quayle stumbles in Arizona
Asked about the site this week, Quayle told The Associated Press that he “wrote a couple of satirical and fictional pieces for a satirical website” but that he quit doing so once the website shifted its editorial direction away from satire. Richie says the site’s content and tone have not changed from the days when Quayle was connected to it.
When asked if he wrote as Brock Landers, Quayle said: “There’s all sorts of posts under that alias and that’s not me. That’s really all I’ve got to say about that.”
Back in Arizona, the Arizona Capitol Times advances the story, discovering that Quayle’s involvement went back deeper than previously known:
Arizona Capitol Times: Quayle’s ties to ‘The Dirty’ founder began in 2005
Recalled Richie, referred to here by his real name, Hooman Karamian:
“There were chicks all over the place, trying to hook up with celebrities,” Karamian said. “We moseyed around the bar and casino tables, just making fun of chicks.”
Karamian, who made a comment on his website about a “crazy hooker” in Tahoe said he was referring to that night, but said he was only talking about a woman that he and Quayle had assumed was a prostitute and on drugs.
“I said (on TheDirty.com), ‘Hey, do you remember that crazy hooker?’ because we saw some hooker who was acting crazy,” Karamian told the Arizona Capitol Times. “I wasn’t implying that he had sex with a hooker at all.”
Thanks for clearing that up, Nik!
On Saturday, the Dirty bites back some more:
The Dirty: Ben Quayle is the Pinocchio of politics
… And on Sunday, a little more:
The Dirty: Brock Landers’ aka Ben Quayle’s Family Values Campaign
10:22 PM
Ben Quayle lies on John King
“I’ve been consistent with my story from the beginning,” he says.
“I had no affiliation with that website.”
11:47 AM
Politico continues to dog Young Benny Quayle
Politico’s latest encapsulation of Quayle’s situation is hard to argue with:
Republican congressional candidate Ben Quayle’s glossy campaign photos and polished talking points paint for voters a portrait of a longtime Arizonan, accomplished attorney and family man who will bring a “new generation” to Washington.
The claims reflect the small biographical exaggerations that often accompany a political newcomer’s first campaign. The reality is that Quayle has held three jobs in four years, posed for pictures in campaign literature with children that were not his, and grew up in Washington with a famous father, former Vice President Dan Quayle, whose influential friends have given generously to the younger Quayle’s campaign.
But Quayle, 33, has had to confront a much bigger credibility issue this week after a blogger revealed that he had once been a contributing writer for Dirty Scottsdale, a raunchy, sex-themed website that covered the club scene in his adopted home town before morphing into the national gossip site TheDirty.com.
[…]
Quayle’s connection to the site has undercut the carefully honed image of a conservative with strong family values, and his inept handling of its disclosure brings up a different association with the Quayle name – his father’s gaffe-prone history.
Meanwhile, Quayle released a new campaign commercial today, in which, he calls Barack Obama “the worst president in history.”
… which is pretty funny.
Quayle’s father, of course, is frequently cited—here and here for example—as among the worst vice presidents in U.S. history.
And Young Benny Quayle himself isn’t exactly going to go down as one of the best congressional candidates in history.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/22/uselections2008.usa
10:05 PM
By the way ... where did the name "Brock Landers" come from?
… Apparently from the film Boogie Nights.
Young Benny Quayle took the name from an interesting character.
I haven’t seen the film recently, but it comes from a film-within-a-film, “Brock Landers: Angels Live In My Town,” in which our hero, the massively endowed Dirk Diggler, casts himself as an omnisexual crime-detecting stud:
Brock Landers: You still hungry?
Jessie St. Vincent: Starving.
Brock: [Unzipping pants] Then feast on that.
The video above is just the fake film credits.
You can see the full raunchy scene with the dialogue here:
8:55 AM
A second (and more important) big unanswered Ben Quayle question
… did wife Tiffany know about his moonlighting gig looking for Scottsdale’s Firstest Foxy Lady?
I read that the man the Sonoran Alliance calls “Benny” Quayle was married “recently.”
Quayle’s double life as the skanky Dirty Scottsdale’s Brock Landers was about three years ago.
8:49 AM
The big unanswered Ben Quayle question
… So, uh, did you ever find the “first foxy lady of Scottsdale?”
By the way, if there’s an original Arizona Republic story on Quayle today I can’t find it on the AZCentral site.
The original Politico story is here.
The second Politico story, in which Quayle admits he lied in the first one, is here.
8:15 AM
Ben Quayle likes young girls! And once adopted a dog in Wickenberg
You might look at the photo above and think, Oh, no—not another generation of Quayles.
The photo is from a campaign mailer in Ben Quayle’s bid for the GOP nomination for John Shadegg’s congressional seat—one of two his campaign has sent out that shows him with the young girls.
Turns out that Quayle, the son of former vice president Dan Quayle, doesn’t have kids.
That despite the fact that he’s certainly acting like their father, the hedline blares “A NEW GENERATION,” and the copy below includes the line, “[Wife] Tiffany and I live in this district and are going to raise our family here.”
A Quayle spokesperson told the Arizona Capitol Times, “They’re just terribly cute kids.”
The ACT didn’t follow up and ask whether Quayle, who is 33, couldn’t find some kids his own age to play with.
An Arizona Republic story says that the Quayle website doesn’t mention any children, though it does contain the information that “Ben and Tiffany have a puppy named Louie they rescued from the Wickenburg Humane Society.”
In the ACT story, the campaign spokesperson, Damon Moley, gets a little defiant:
“We are presenting Ben as a pro-family candidate because he is a pro-family candidate,” Moley said. “We are presenting him as a traditional-values candidate because he is a traditional values candidate.”
He’s pro-family—but doesn’t happen to have one. And he’s into traditional values: Like misrepresentation and pandering.
A Politico story on the mailer says that Quayle has raised more than $1 million thus far.
6:41 AM