Billy Long Scandal Devloping

Eli Yokley at The Fuse Joplin has been reporting on a developing scandal with 7th District Republican candidate Billy Long:

Meet Jennifer Case. 35 year old, military wife. Her husband is serving in Afghanistan. Full-time mother of three.

Case worked in the food service industry in the Springfield area for years. During that time, she says she had numerous encounters with Billy Long, who is now running for U.S. Congress in the seventh district.

Case, in a letter obtained by TFJ (link at bottom), alleges Long to be “demeaning to women and people of color” during that time.

“I witnessed Mr. Long refuse service from a person of color and one server he suspected was homosexual, calling him a ‘swisher.’ Mr. Long refused to have this individual even walk near his table,” she alleged.

“I recall Mr. Long saying, ‘We need to take back this country from the niggers and women running it… that’s the problem in D.C.”’, Case alleged.

I wasn't sure how much to make of this previously, since this was, after all, just the personal testimony of one woman. However, Yokley's post today reveals an audio tape of conversations with three other people that confirm some of the details of Case's story.

You can listen to the audio here:


Don't expect the Post-Dispatch to pick this story up. They're too busy cutting out information about Peter Kinder from Tony Messenger's columns and covering the exciting revelation that Auditor Susan Montee once drank a Margarita and acted silly.

By the way, Long's opponent is Scott Eckersley, the former Republican fired and smeared by Ed Martin.

Astroturf Hennessy Pretends to Be Anti-Castle

At a time when tea parties were defeating Republican candidates around the country who only talked the talk on fiscal responsibility, Bill Hennessy convinced the St. Louis Tea Party to support Roy Blunt over conservative challenger Chuck Purgason. That's Roy Blunt, the guy who voted for a $700 billion dollar bank bailout, supported Cash for Clunkers, and ran up huge deficits while in the leadership of the GOP.

In this same time period, Hennessy also supported former Matt Blunt Chief of Staff Ed Martin, who represents the exact opposite of transparency in government (allegedly part of the tea party's platform). Martin was fired from his job and cost the state of Missouri over $2 million dollars for illegally firing and smearing a fresh-out-of-law-school conservative who had the audacity to ask the Blunt administration to follow the law. Even though Blunt sent the man, Scott Eckersley, an apology for the false smears, Ed Martin continues to smear Eckersley to this day.

In fact, Bill Hennessy is so astroturf, he asked Ed Martin and another political insider, Gina Loudon (wife of a former Republican State Senator and owner of a Republican PR firm), to be on the original tea party steering committee.

So, with all this baggage, it sure looks like Hennessy might be first in line for the title of Most Astroturf of All Local Tea Party Leaders (I mention local because the lobbyists like Carl Bearden and Dick Armey who head national tea party groups and Americans for Prosperity Chapters are as astroturf as one can get). But hold on! Cause Bill Hennessy's going to show you how much of a rebel conservative he is by attacking Mike Castle, the mainstream Republican who recently lost to Palin-endorsed Christine O'Donnell. Here's what Hennessy tweeted:



And here's the full message:



See that? Bill Hennessy is a total right-wing renegade who doesn't take no guff from G.O.P. insiders. Except, that is, for the minor fact that Hennessy actually supported Mike Castle before the primary, and warned about the dangers of supporting O'Donnell because of "ideological purity:"



Hennessy actually linked to a video of Charles Krauthammer saying that Palin's endorsement of O'Donnell was "destructive and capricious" as well as "self-indulgence." Since it's good fun, I'll post the video here:



So Hennessy supported Castle before the vote. Then, after Castle loses, he talks trash about him. Pretty impressive.

On Daily Kos yesterday, Jed Lewison wrote "teahadists are just embarrassed Republicans." I don't think that's necessarily true for everyone, but it's certainly true about the St. Louis tea party leaders.