When Consultants Go Wild

CA-36

About a month ago, conservative Craig Huey (on the right) shocked the political establishment in both parties when he narrowly won a spot to take on Janice Hahn in a special election to be held on July 12th. I underestimated Huey once and wasn't going to do it again so I supported him. No sooner had that happened and a horrible internet ad was exposed by Politico.com David Cantonese, He wrote about the story again when he interviewed the "creator"of the ad
And then again here when Craig Huey denounced the ad. Ladd Ehlinger is the gentleman's name who created the ad.

My organization came out against the ad and the Daily Caller's Matt Lewis carried it.

Enough said? I thought so until I had a conversation with a colleague who was intrigued by the ad and the fact that it had "gone viral" with over 500k hits.

"that should get the guy who produced the ad a lot of attention"

Which is exactly why the Huey campaign and his supporters are concerned.

According to what I read about Ladd, he did it to "piss people off".

He also admitted in one of the interviews that he didn't really care about the outcome of the race because he wasn't working for anyone but himself (that's my paraphrase).

How is this any different when an outside third party, say the NRA decides to weigh in on a race?

Well for one, most of the time when these so-called third parties get involved its on issues that most folks would admit are their issues. Would anyone other than my friends at Gun Owners of America argue that the NRA knows guns better than any candidate? I don't think so.

But in this case -- Ladd Ehlinger took a potent issue (I argue the only one the campaign had) and blew it up. If Craig is somehow able to shake the genie out of the bottle, AGAIN and win in this district (18% more D's than R's) than most of the mainstream media will credit Mr. Ehlinger, which would really be a travesty.

I don't know if the Huey campaign will recover from this -- and I'm not sure that they will be able to use this issue now.

The only clear winner here?

A man named Ladd.....