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Last night, Representative (and AG candidate) Jeff Harris invited a number of Missouri bloggers to participate on a conference call. He started off with a quick overview of his background, why he’s running, and some of the recent developments in his campaign. He then took questions from us bloggers for approximately an hour, talking about everything from CAFOs to the battle of the endorsements to Internet fundraising to when he’ll next visit Branson. Harris handled the call well, especially considering that he’s talking to several strangers in the middle of a campaign with a newborn who hasn’t yet slept a full night. (And as he admitted on the call, he hasn’t slept a full night either. Not to diminish his obvious pride at being a new dad.)
That here in Missouri, a candidate on the state level would spend an hour talking to a bunch of state bloggers almost a year before the primary election is novel indeed. Still, it doesn’t shock me that Harris made that effort. After all, he’s already embraced, and to some degree supported, the state blogosphere in a way that I haven’t seen from any other candidate in Missouri. Not only does he regularly participate in our Q & A Series, he blasted an e-mail to his list to check out the candidate responses. He’s also bought ads like the one on the left on blogs all around the state and e-mailed a corresponding video to his supporters. He’s had a fundraising ask, the Four Corners, to transparently show support from every region in Missouri.
I don’t mean to knock other campaigns or elected officials – for the most part, they’ve been very responsive (including Harris’ rivals) – but they haven’t been aggressive like Harris has. Now, does this mean that Harris will become the Missouri netroots’ candidate of 2008? Or even if he does, will it help him win? We’ll see in the next 9 months…
Oh, and speaking of Harris’ rivals, since Chris Koster apparently will soon announce his candidacy for the Attorney General’s office, we hope to have a full field on the Democratic side in next week’s installment of our Q & A series.
Photo of Jeff Harris and Young Democrats courtesy of the Harris campaign
If they wish. I thought the fact that we were actually on the call was more surprising than any of the answers he gave.
for taking the time to get to know Jeff. He isn’t the most exciting person in the world but he is a good, decent man who is a great public servant.
I invite everyone to go to the attorney general’s website before Koster announces tomorrow. The website can be found at: http://ago.mo.gov/La…
When Koster announces tomorrow and talks about how he put everyone in jail I want everyone to remember that the attorney general himself doesn’t prosecute cases. This is nothing more that just one more deception from Mr. Koster. Jay Nixon was not a county prosecutor. Neither was Jack Danforth. Chris Koster is just going to whore the crime issue tomorrow big time.