Landrieu Backs Into A Buzzsaw: Attack On Cassidy Backfires Horribly [VIDEO]

In the fight of her political life, Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu took the gloves off on day 1 of the runoff election between her and Republican candidate Bill Cassidy. Fewer than 24 hours later, the attack Landrieu launched went horribly wrong.

The day after neither candidate reached the 50 percent plus 1 vote threshold, Sen. Landrieu held a press conference where she slammed her opponent as absent during the devastation from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Standing in front of a VA Medical Center construction site, Landrieu called Cassidy “wishy-washy, unreliable, undependable, not sure who he is, not sure who he was and not sure who he wants to be.

She even tweeted, “When the New Orleans #VA hospital needed to be rebuilt out of the rubble of Katrina & Rita, #WhereWasBill?” with a link to a press coverage of her news conference.

Cassidy tweeted a response to Landrieu with a link to a news story on his activities, answering: “Mary Landrieu wants to know where I was during Hurricane Katrina? Setting up a surge hospital for refugees

My effort this morning.

http://lincolnparishnewsonline.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/louisiana-paid-media-fail-again/

Louisiana Paid Media Fail – Again
11/08/2014 By Walter Abbott

The big news yesterday in the blogosphere and on social media was Mary Landrieu’s epic fail with the rollout of her “Where was Bill?” runoff campaign theme. But if you depend upon what pundit C. B. Forgotston refers to as the Paid Media, you would never have known about it.

Here’s what happened. After Tuesday’s election, and Senate candidate Bill Cassidy’s tie vote with incumbent Mary Landrieu, the runoff campaign kicked off with Landrieu using the theme “Where was Bill?” Among the assertions Landrieu made was that Cassidey was AWOL after Katrina.

Speaking at a VA Medical Center construction site in New Orleans, Landrieu said:

“This is the time for Bill Cassidy to stand up and talk about his own pitiful record.” “And when Louisiana needed disaster aid, I was there.” “Where was Bill? And when this hospital needed a champion to build, and rebuild literally out of the rubble of Katrina and Rita, where was Senator Landrieu? Standing here and fighting. Where was BIll?”

See here the WWL-TV news story.

All the Paid Media outlets carried the Landrieu story – the Gannetoids, The TP, The Advocate, all the TV stations. But when Cassidy responded to Landrieu’s rant, the Paid Media was nowhere to be found.

Here’s what Cassidy replied via Twitter:

Bill Cassidy @BillCassidy
Follow

Mary Landrieu wants to know where I was during Hurricane Katrina? Setting up a surge hospital for refugees. #LASEN

Here’s the story from a 2005 Money magazine article.

With a little help from a lot of friends, a doctor turned an abandoned K Mart into a field hospital for victims of Hurricane Katrina

By Ellen McGirt – November 1, 2005

“We had no way to predict what people coming out of New Orleans were going to need. My physician group didn’t have emergency preparedness responsibilities, so we made a lot of this stuff up as we went along.

The old K Mart we were to use had been abandoned for about eight years. It was filthy. There was no electricity, no air conditioning and no windows.

We had doctors and nurses step up to design the facility. I asked my friend the insurance guy to be the volunteer coordinator because insurance guys always know everyone. Around 150 people from two churches showed up with mops and brooms to help clean. An electrician got the power up in 24 hours. We created four to five wards holding 30 cots each.

Trucks arrived with $5 million worth of medical supplies, but no packing lists were included. We had I.V. bags but no poles. We had cots but no crash cart. Our volunteers found EKG machines, printers–someone even got a new Honda delivered. Physicians showed up from as far away as Iowa. By the time patients arrived, we had beds, lights, generators, computers and volunteers to play with children, provide transportation and reconnect families.

We saw fatigue, dehydration, emotional trauma and illnesses like diabetes and asthma made worse by the patients’ experience. The shelters wouldn’t take newborns, so we took mamas and their babies. It was the most amazing thing. We never got the volume we braced for, but we were ready–in 26 hours.”

So far this morning, we’ve found only one sentence in a Times-Picayune story about Cassidy’s reply. And that one sentence is buried in the eighth paragraph.

But that’s why we do what we do. After all, “What isn’t in the newspapers is often more newsworthy than what is.”

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