Well you can’t say all the candidate debates around here have been dogs. Graves and Barnes got to it last week in St Joe.
And both of the Dennis Moore/Nick Jordan square-offs had their moments.
The latest came Wednesday at an Overland Park hotel.
“They sat around for 10 years and did nothing!” Shouted Jordan. He was aggressively attacking Moore’s role on the House committee he serves on that regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two quasi-government housing agencies who now serve as almost everybody’s favorite whipping posts.
In the debate Wednesday, Jordan blamed the economic meltdown on Moore, the five-termer.
There two ways to look at Jordan’s effective and aggressive attack on Wednesday.
The conventional thought suggests the aggression is born from desperation. Jordan, this line goes, is behind in his own polling; running out of time and has to do something to spark the campaign and voters interest. Something tough and new enough to get on the news, in the paper and on the blogs. As this is written Jordan is 2 for 3 on that. Ch 9 reported on Jordan’s strong words at 6 and 10 Wednesday.
The Jordan campaign staff at the debate twice tried to ‘bums-rush’ the crowd into thinking his way. They started clapping when they felt Jordan landed a series of verbal combinations. And it was true he had Moore on the defense.
Moore conceded he didn’t like all the Christmas Tree ornaments and earmarks the bailout had dangling from I, when Bailout II returned from the Senate. He added, he was helpless to change it. So he voted for because “it was the right thing to do.”
Jordan, waving his arms, countered “there were alternatives all over the place!”
The other line of thinking is that Jordan can smell it. That he believes he’s coming on. That he’s got the bread to stay in it. He hopes to close hard and fast. He’s banking voters are in a ‘throw the bastards out’ mode-and Moore is in their crosshairs. Jordan’s intensity an animation at the end of the Wednesday event could be used to back that up.
Add to that, the fact that Moore did not even mention Jordan’s demand for him to return 64K in contributions Moore received from financials in the first 48 hours after Bailout II passed.
And Moore, an easy-going, always available sound bite, left soon after the session ended I was not able-nor were other reporters- able- to ask him about the Jordan contribution charge and refund demand.
When Jordan accused him last week him of passing an amendment restricting oversight on Fannie and Freddie, Moore has a news conference within 2 hours. A smart political insider came up to me after the debate-a GOPer- and exclaimed “Moore is on the run!”
But another old salt who’s seen ‘em come and seen ‘em go against Dennis Moore wonders whether or not Jordan can do it because Moore, he says works the district well and has not angered the voters. Jordan disagrees.
BTW, the Jordan camp says there were supposed to be 3 debates in this race. Moore announced that the second debate would be the final one on one. We’re checking.
