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PA-13: PA College Dems Defend Boyle CM

Brendan Boyle 2013
State Rep. Brendan Boyle

File this one under ‘not helping.’

The Pa. College Democrats this week leapt to the defense of Ann Mathew, who is coordinating state Rep. Brendan Boyle’s campaign in the competitive PA-13 congressional primary.

Mathew, 20, is a student at Temple University.

The website Keystone Politics ran a piece Tuesday titled, Why Is a 20-Year-Old Running Brendan Boyle’s Campaign?

While there’s no doubt Ms. Mathew’s political skills must be very impressive for her young age, we do have to wonder why Representative Boyle’s campaign has been unable to attract a more experienced political hand* with a few more House campaigns under her belt.

The Pa. College Dems took umbrage in a press release under the heading “Why Not Hire a 20 Year Old to Run Your Campaign?”

“No wonder young people find disillusion with politics; they are laughed off as young, inexperienced, and unqualified, even by their progressive allies,” said Dylan Morpurgo, Pennsylvania College Democrats’ (PACD) Eastern VP, in reaction to the article.

“Young people are the future of this commonwealth and should be given the opportunity to prove themselves,” the release says.

The full PACD statement is here.

Boyle is running against physician Valerie Arkoosh, state Sen. Daylin Leach (D-Montco) and former Congresswoman Marjorie Margolies for the seat of Rep. Allyson Schwartz. It appears the campaign will the second most high profile primary in Pa. in 2014, behind only the Governor’s race.

Why isn’t the College Dems statement helpful? Most campaigns are anything but eager to see those kinds of headlines about staff.

In Boyle’s case, the headline about Mathew’s age followed several changes in recent weeks.

His previous Finance Director and former spokesperson left the campaign in July and later took a position with Schwartz for Governor. In a transition that Boyle said was, “no change in the original plan,” his DC-based consulting firm 4C Partners shed its fundraising duties and retracted to media consulting.

At present, the highest ranking staffer on team Boyle is Finance Director Adam Erickson. Mathew’s title is Campaign Coordinator and she serves as campaign spokesperson. The rest of Boyle’s campaign, for the most part, is a group of college students who work as interns and sometimes staff.

No one has the title of campaign manager.

As an editorial note, in PoliticsPA’s dealings with Mathew she easily has matched the professionalism of her colleagues in the campaign world.

She did not comment for this story.

*The KP piece originally referred to Mathew as Boyle’s Campaign Manager, based on PoliticsPA’s mislabeling of her title in an earlier article. Her correct title is Campaign Coordinator.

19 Responses

  1. Steve-
    I’m not sure that Brady knows how to use a computer, let alone find PoliticsPA on the Internet. He probably has a staffer for stuff like that, and probably tells that staffer that none of the people posting are on his donor lists, so he doesn’t care what they write.

    🙂

  2. And Progressive Against Daylin, please give it a rest. Putting a guy’s information on a page is completely out of line and by hurling insults you immediately excuse yourself from being considered anything but a crank. Disagree with someone? Fine. Just do it in a way that doesn’t make you sound so vindictive.

  3. Well I appreciate your somewhat condescending assumption that I’m ignorant of the forces that shape intra-party politics. I have read it, and you, Noel and Zaller are absolutely right, much to my frustration. Putting that aside, by their standard it would seem like Mr. Boyle and Mrs. Margolies are ahead by endorsements, and Mr. Leach and Ms. Arkoosh are leading the pack financially.

    However my point below was that a story bouncing back and forth that appears to be based on nothing but hearsay isn’t worthy of even a discussion about party power brokers and fundraisers. On that note, I do wonder how many hours Bob Brady spends on Politics PA?

  4. John Geeting, this is NOT Brendan Boyle. I do not know Brendan Boyle in real life, I don’t even know if I will be voting for him. I really don’t have a horse in this race, except to defeat Mr. Ed.

    I am just a concerned lesbian progressive, struggling to make ends meet in Frankford, which, if you even were from the region (we all know you live in Bethlehem), would know than Brendan does not represent that part of Philly. My partner comes from Norristown, she has met Daylin, and he does not care about the issues that the town faces.

    “Politics is serious business; we need a Councilperson, not a clown”
    -Progressive Against Daylin

  5. Actually, the pre-primary time period is an extremely important time in the campaign season. That is when all the various party actors – donors, campaign professionals, activists, and yes, partisan media such as KP, size up the nascent campaigns’ potential and make decisions about who to support. This is really when the nominee is chosen. I would encourage you to read “The Party Decides” by Hans Noel et al, to gain some insight into the primary nomination process.

  6. It seems like this is just a sequence of a non-story bouncing back and forth between the pajama people. Guess what: I assure you that no matter how many times you try, throwing a piece of crap against a wall hoping it’ll stick won’t work, because it’s a piece of crap.

    In sports when everyone is waiting around for the real action to begin and in that vacuum a bunch of frivolous crap takes its place, we call it “silly season.”

    I think we’re there, folks. Maybe tomorrow these two sites will start comparing what each candidate’s favorite color is? I personally feel like Mr. Leach is partial to Orange, based on those wild shirts I see him in.

  7. We all know he does not need a real campaign as the Philadelphia Democratic Party is calling the shots.

  8. Robert-
    I realize that Schwartz isn’t a rival candidate. I was making a side point in general about staffers switching campaigns. However, I can see how the juxtaposition of my non-sequitur could have an unintended interpretation.

    I have seen paid staffers from a campaign infiltrate rival campaigns (under the guise of volunteering to stuff envelopes) as an opportunity to spy. So, I was thinking that even volunteers should sign some sort of similar agreement, that they are not working for a rival campaign at the time. (You can’t really prohibit a volunteer from switching the way you can a paid employee.) They could write simple statement listing which campaigns they have worked on, and how recently.

  9. John Geeting appears, from his facebook profile (https://www.facebook.com/jongeeting), to be a young person himself. He looks like, as Allison Kilkenney says “an apathetic hipster douchebag”, the type of airheads who support and worship Senator Bozo (D-King Of Prussia). I wonder if and how much this person is being paid by Leach’s campaign to spread ageist BS. Although I am old enough to not get carded at the state store, I still believe young people are the future, they should be listened to, and they should be trusted, and Senator Leach shows his true colors here.

    “Politics is serious business, we need a Congressperson, not a clown”
    -Progressive Against Daylin

  10. DD:

    “His previous Finance Director and former spokesperson left the campaign in July and later took a position with Schwartz for Governor.”

    Thus, your concern [“all campaign staffers should be forced to sign some kind of non-compete pledge that if they leave, they aren’t allowed to work for a rival candidate prior to the primary”] is moot, for Schwartz isn’t a “rival” in this instance.

    Were BB to withdraw [as you are suggesting, due to inability to match-$ with the others], it is unclear to whom his supporters [Philly-D’s and unions, primarily, it appears] would flock [Valerie Arkoosh, state Sen. Daylin Leach (D-MontCo) or former Congresswoman Marjorie Margolies].

  11. “*The KP piece originally referred to Mathew as Boyle’s Campaign Manager, based on PoliticsPA’s mislabeling of her title in an earlier article. Her correct title is Campaign Coordinator.”

    So some poor staffer is headlines on all the blogs, because no “journalist” bothered to fact check her title?

  12. Is this an issue to the Leach campaign and his supporters if this young woman was a male and not female?

  13. Yeah how dare PACD defend a college Democrat from being unfairly attacked for being in college and politically involved!

  14. Bolye’s campaign needs to hire college students so he doesn’t look like the youngest one in the office and get asked to fetch coffee. 🙂

    (Just teasing, Brendan)

    College students have a lot more energy and are quite sharp. The only real experience they lack is just how corrupt the political system is and how the older players have rigged the system, or will engage in disingenuous challenges to valid petitions, etc.

    The exodus of staff from Boyle to Schwartz and the pullback by consulting firm are more troubling signs.

    I think though that all campaign staffers should be forced to sign some kind of non-compete pledge that if they leave, they aren’t allowed to work for a rival candidate prior to the primary.

  15. Keystone Politics is pretty openly backing Leach for this seat so it’s no surprise they’re taking cheap shots at Boyle.

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