Today was a long production day in Boston and we spent lots of time working on the CT show and booking guests for the next leg of the tour in Ohio.
It was really great to be back in Boston. This city feels like home in a lot of ways and I miss it very much. I got to walk around Northeastern’s campus and reminisce about a simpler time. Ah, we were so young and carefree in the days when our country wasn’t all screwed-up.
It’s getting on 11:00 PM and we are going to shove off early tomorrow morning. Next stop OHIO where we’re going to getting really dirty in the grassroots. I’ve been looking forward to this leg of the trip because it’s all happening in the mid-west and there’s really no more important state in the country than Ohio.
We’ve already interviewed candidate for Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and I hope we get to see her again. She is really tremendous and will be a fair and competent Secretary of State.
I hope that folks are enjoying reading about the trip on the website. We’d all love it if you could hit us with some comments so we know that there are people out there listening to the episodes and getting excited about the elections in only 37 days.
Ok, that’s all for now. Going to brush my teeth and go to bed in a bit. Have a great week and follow us tomorrow as we take our longest drive yet to Ohio.
-Matthew
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Dianne Farrell, Candidate for U.S. Congress
Connecticut’s 4th Congressional District
Tim Tagaris, Internet Director
Ned Lamont for U.S. Senate
Nancy DiNardo, State Democratic Party Chair
Connecticut
Still in Boston on this beautiful New England night. I broke out the fleece for the first time last night as it’s already chilly up here in the Commonwealth.
Today was a long day- we were up at 6:00 AM to meet State Senator Ed Augustus at the Statehouse for an interview. Ed’s a good guy and gave us some insight into the political landscape here in Massachusetts. He also gave us an insiders perspective on the recent healthcare bill that was passed in the Statehouse to cover all Massachusetts residents.
After the interview, we had some breakfast in the Boston Common and then came back to Arty’s house to work. I took a little nap (well, 1.5 hours) as we didn’t get to bed until way too late last night.
We are all preparing for another big day tomorrow- three interviews and we’ll try to finish the Connecticut show.
With Deval Patrick
-Matthew
We just ate a huge Portuguese feast at Patty’s parent’s house and now we’re all sitting around doing work on our respective laptops.
We had a really great day in New Haven. As Josh mentioned before we interviewed Tim Tagaris, the Internet Director for the Ned Lamont campaign. He’s wicked smart (I’m in New England so I can say that) and we’ll have his interview posted in the next day or two.
New Haven is a beautiful town and today was perhaps the nicest day I’ve seen all year- perfect temperature with sun and a slight breeze. When the weather is good, I am happy.
The leaves are already starting to change colors up here in New England and we’ve driven by a number of pumpkin patches. It’s definitely fall and I love it.
Tomorrow we’ll spend the day right outside of Providence producing a couple of shows and then tomorrow night we’re scheduled to interview Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate in Rhode Island. Then, we’ll head to our old stomping ground in Boston for a three day jaunt. We have some great interviews booked up in the Bay State including with a former Democratic nominee for President…any guesses?
Ok, back to work. Hope everyone is having a good night out in TV land.
-Matthew
We’re on the highway slowly making our way out of Connecticut and its traffic. While our greatest issue in the state was the lack of good Verizon service and quick internet, by far the largest issue on everyone’s mind here (and honestly, everywhere we’ve been) is Iraq. From the politicians, to the campaign staffers, to our gracious hosts the Weins last night, everyone is voting on the war. Maybe things will change as we head west and enter some more purple states. Over at The Fix they’re already in Ohio where people seem concerned about gas prices. But in the Nutmeg state, it’s Iraq. Despite “I’m Sticking With Joe” road signs, things don’t look great for Senator Lieberman.
I’d been to Yale before but I guess never really walked around. It’s a gorgeous day and after our interview with the Lamont campaign’s internet director, Tim Tagaris, we met up with Bec for a food truck burrito and a gander through the Freshman Quad.
We’ve been on the road for over a week now but it still doesn’t really feel like a roadtrip. Travelling the familiar roads of the Northeast corridor still feels more like just driving around. That should change when we depart Boston next week.
Traffic’s been going up so we know you’re all out there. Drop a comment and say hi.
I haven’t blogged much in the past day or two as I’ve been deeply immersed in the getting the new website up. We’ve still got more features to go as well as some new graphics and layout, but I’m pretty happy with what we’ve done so far. For all you Safari users, I know there’s a bug with the layout of the Recent Episodes and I’m working on it. I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Dylan Kuhn for his wonderful GeoMashup plugin that makes this whole thing possible. Hopefully I didn’t destroy too much in hacking it to work on our site.
We just did a good interview with CT State Democratic Party Chair Nancy DiNardo. She gave us a good outline of the state of Connecticut politics that will add some color to our interviews with Dianne Farrell (running in the CT 4th) and as-of-yet-undetermined member of Team Lamont. Here are the boys with Nancy. Sadly I forgot to take photos at Farrell’s office as I was too busy with the video camera. PoliticsTV should be getting their first tape tomorrow.
Now a night of work and taking advantage of the hospitality of friends of friends. Expect to hear our second PA episode later tonight.
The DoubleSpeak van rolls on and we’re slowlyh creeping towards New England. We just did an interview with Diane Farrell who’s running against Chris Shays in CT-04. She seems very genuine and down to earth.
Bush was in her district today raising money for Connecticut Republicans so it was a good day for us to be there. She did a press conference which we attended and then we did a brief pull-aside after she answered questions from the media.
We’re headed to New Haven now to interview Nancy DiNardo, Chairwoman for the CT Dems. We are sort of in limbo at the moment because we haven’t heard back from her on an exact location. Hope we don’t get screwed…
Lots of BMWs and Mercedes on the road…ah, Connecticut.
Josh did a GREAT job on the website and as you can see we now have a map tracking our every move! It’s cool, now you can watch us in real-time as the minivan rolls up the coast.
We are still trying to finalize our interview plans for tomorrow. As it stands, we have a tentative interview with Diane Farrell who is running against Chris Shays in Connecticut. This is a marquee race and we’re going to lean-in to Diane’s staff to get this interview at some point tomorrow.
We’re also going to interview Nancy DiNardo who is the Chairwoman for the Democratic Party in Connecticut. She should be an interesting interview as things in Connecticut are crazy right now in light of the Lieberman defeat.
Thank you very much to the great people we’ve seen on this leg of the journey. It’s been a fun stop and we’ll miss New York.
We’re still in downtown Philly- about to release Episode 10 on Net Neutrality. It’s been a great day- we were up at 6:00 AM to drive to Bristol, PA to interview Patrick Murphy.
We have been reaching-out to folks in New Jersey, Connecticut and beyond to book some great interviews. So far we’ve gotten a great reaction from the campaigns we’ve spoken to.
We are preparing for an interview with a political activist from downtown who’s going to talk to us about why Radical Rick Santorum is such a wacko.
So who exactly is supporting Joe Lieberman’s Independent bid for re-election in Connecticut? A recent article answers that question: Karl Rove and the Republican Party.
That’s right, it seems that during the weeks leading-up to Lieberman’s defeat in the Democratic Primary in Connecticut, the White House was hard at work instructing its money machine to give to Senator Lieberman.
The White House funneled millions of dollars through major Republican Party contributors to Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s primary campaign in a failed effort to ensure the support of the former Democrat for the Bush administration.
A senior GOP source said the money was part of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove’s strategy to maintain a Republican majority in the Senate in November. The source said Mr. Rove, together with Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, directed leading pro-Bush contributors to donate millions of dollars to Mr. Lieberman’s campaign for re-election in Connecticut in an attempt that he would be a “Republican-leaning” senator.
