More on schumer
http:// www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2350439/posts
At a Columbia Political Union event last semester, Amy Klobuchar, Democratic Senator from Minnesota, was reminiscing about a Halloween costume she wore in high school. Her Purple Rain outfit inspired by musician Prince was great, Klobuchar explained, but she lost the costume contest to someone dressed as a bathroom wall. Klobuchar’s legislative director, sitting in the front row, shook her head at the digression.
“No?” Klobuchar asked, turning to the staffer, who kept shaking her head. The Senator changed the subject. Moira Campion, the woman who intervened to avert the anecdote, is a former employee of New York Senator Chuck Schumer—a fact Klobuchar went out of her way to mention.
Schumer was head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), the Party organization that oversees Senate races, for the 2006 and 2008 election cycles. During his tenure, he brought Klobuchar and thirteen other new Democratic senators to Washington, raising his caucus from a 45-seat minority to a commanding 59-seat majority. (Assuming Al Franken’s victory in Minnesota.)
Schumer was heavily involved in selecting many Democratic nominees and, among other requirements, mandated approval over the hiring of some staffers including, perhaps, Campion. She is one of the myriad graduates from Schumer’s office now ensconced in the upper echelons of Democratic politics.
Both as legislators and campaigners, Schumer and his staffers have shown an extraordinary ability to secure political victories. As a result, his ethos has permeated the party both through his leadership and the ubiquity of former staffers like Campion. But the same drive for victory that Schumer demands from himself and the cloud of people around him may be a liability for Democrats.
WELCOME TO SCHUMERLAND