Martin Gottlieb in his DDN article yesterday, piqued my interest in 2nd Dist Congresswoman, Jean Schnidt. Gottlieb quoted Elvis –”it’s now or never” — and said that in three area Republican congressional districts, Democrats have a chance. Gottlib wrote, “Schmidt has been an exceptionally weak candidate. She became notorious for an absurd name-calling incident in Congress, then was found to be inflating her educational attainments and passing off generic Republican material as something she had written. As a result, she almost lost last time to Democrat Victoria Wulsin, a doctor.”
To find out more about “Mean Jean,” as Schmidt is often referred to, to find out what this “name-calling incident” was all about, I found a helpful web-site, paid for by Dr. Wulsin’s campaign, that explains Gottlieb’s comments about Schmidt. The web-site is called Embarrassed By Schmidt.
The name calling incident refers to a one minute House speech by Schmidt that put the House of Representatives in an uproar — many Boos. In that minute, Schmidt criticized a fellow congressman, John Murtha, and used the term “coward,” saying she had a message from a Colonel Dann Bop: “He asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.”
After the incident Colonel Bop issued a statement denying that he ever made such a statement and that he would never call a fellow marine a “coward.”
Later, Schmidt asked for her remarks to be stricken from the record.
The Embarassed by Schmidt site also shows that Schmidt repeatedly claimed to have two college degrees, rather than one, and that this became an issue in her primary campaign. It also shows that how she copied someone else’s written work and put her name on it.
Schmidt votes are anti-progressive, more so, according to the web-site Progressive Punch, than fellow Republicans Turner and Hobson. I wrote here, that Progressive Punch shows John Boehner’s progressive score at 2.64%, Jean Schmidt score at 4.12%, Hobson’s score at10.52%, and Mike Turner’s score at 10.93%.
Schmidt has two opponents in her race, Democrat Victoria Wulsin and Independent David Krikorian. Recently, Schmidt was in the news because she was hit by a car while jogging. Krikorian’s disdain for Schmidt was shown in his initial reaction to the news of Schmidt’s accident. Krikorian initially showed doubt that the accident ever happened and indicated that he felt Schmidt was faking for the sake of publicity. When it was later shown that Schmidt was actually injured, Krikorian changed his comments.
Here is Schmidt’s one minute House speech that caused the uproar:
