Last week, when we wrote about the fund-raising letter bearing Sen. Sam Brownback's signature which questioned the Catholic faith of several Democratic members of Congress, we noted that Brownback's staff proclaimed that they had nothing to do with it and that they "had never seen, heard of, or approved it."
As it turns out, it looks like that is not completely accurate, as Brownback's Chief of Staff Glen Chambers sent an email to Deal Hudson, founder of the group which issued the letter in question, blaming it all on on an unnamed campaign aide from last year:
Deal -
As I mentioned to you on the phone, I think we've gotten to the bottom of the confusion over the mail piece. Neither the Senator nor I had seen the letter or were aware of it. I figured out that you did get permission to use his name on the piece from a former campaign staffer in February of last year.
However, as I mentioned, we'd like to stop any future mailings you have planned using the Senator's name.
Sorry about the confusion.
Last year around this time, both Brownback and Hudson were on the National Catholics for McCain Committee, so maybe this was initially designed to be fund-raising letter for John McCain that was scuttled, only to re-emerge in this new form.
But considering that Brownback ended his own presidential campaign in back in October 2007, just what sort of "former campaign staffer" was giving Hudson permission to mail this sort of letter four months later? It certainly wasn't someone from his Senate campaign, as he was re-elected in 2004, so just why was a "former campaign staffer" signing off on this letter four months after the campaign had ended? And, more importantly, why did it take an entire year for this letter to get released?
This explanation from Browback's staff certainly hasn't cleared up any of the "confusion" regarding this letter; if anything, it is only managed to exacerbate it.
