Republican Martha McSally, who hopes to unseat the newly elected Democrat Ron Barber in Congressional District 2 in November, has announced that her communications director, Sam Stone, is no longer with the campaign. McSally’s statement:

Members of my campaign team are representatives of who I am, what I stand for and why I am running for Congress. Because of that, my communications director, Sam Stone, has resigned his position with the campaign effective immediately. Sam was a valuable member of our campaign and helped us go from zero to 25% in just 68 days during the Special Election in April. We need to reform Washington and change who we send there. The people of Arizona deserve the best from its elected leaders and candidates, and I will give it to them.

Stone’s departure comes after Sunday night’s Politico story:

On the Thursday before the election, a top aide to Republican Martha McSally, a retired Air Force officer and a tea party favorite, approached a Barber aide at an event on the University of Arizona’s Tucson campus. That’s when something strange happened, according to the Barber campaign: The McSally aide, spokesman Sam Stone, offered the 22-year-old Barber staffer advice on how to beat Jesse Kelly, the GOP nominee who was running against Barber in the special election.

Stone, who is a regular guest on Arizona Illustrated’s Political Roundtable, has not returned a phone call or email from the Weekly.

The Politico story has cemented the idea—mentioned in the TW’s post-election story last week—that some members of Jesse Kelly’s team were unhappy that McSally was undermining Kelly. While letting Stone go will remove the immediate distraction, McSally will still have a long way to go to convince some members of the GOP base that she’s a team player who deserves their support.

This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2012.

Getting hassled by The Man Mild-mannered reporter

7 replies on “Stone Quits From McSally Campaign in Wake of Damaging Allegations”

  1. Good to see the RATpublicans will eat and shit on their own as well. Hey, why limit it to the middle class, Dems, Minorities and Schools?

  2. Am I alone in thinking that this is a phoney issue at best; as if Stone’s advice was actually needed in the first place? All Barber had to do (and he did) was to let Jesse Kelly be himself to win the election.

  4. That Barber might want to attract Republican and Independent voters to win since he was down in a poll the Thursday before the election.

    1-It’s a real no brainer given the make up of CD-8 that any Democratic candidate needs to attract Republican and Independent voters. Imagine that! DUH!

    2-Barber wasn’t down in the polls, save maybe Kelly’s poll.

    So, is it:
    a Democratic trick to get the Republicans in-fighting?
    Or is it disinformation from the Kelly folks (who were complaining about McSally days before the election) to claim that Kelly did not lose the election, but was rather betrayed by the McSally campaign.

    I suspect the latter since from reading comments here and the Star that the Kelly folks just don’t seem to grasp how repulsive Kelly was to most of the CD-8 voters. They don’t seem to get the fact that a lot of folks who voted for Barber did so to keep Kelly out.

  5. Am I the only person who thinks that Stone merely didn’t want Kelly to win, so McSally could run for the position and if elected, he could ride on her coattails into a prestigious position in her congressional office in Washington?

  6. Joan, you may be right. I keep hearing that McSally herself was telling voters at events she attended to vote for Barber. If Barber won, she would be able to run against him whereas if Kelly won she was not going to be able to run for the position.

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