Posted on 11/01/2005 5:07:47 PM PST by Anti-Bubba182
Joseph F. Steffen Jr., dubbed the "Prince of Darkness" by his former boss, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., has emerged from the shadows eight months after he was banished from the political light of day. He says he wants to bare his soul. He says he just remembered he has one.
For those of you who have forgotten him, Steffen's the guy who gloried in his role as Ehrlich's unofficial hit man. Democratic opponents blame him for smear tactics dating across years of Ehrlich political campaigns. Steffen now admits they're right, though he doesn't want to get specific. Not yet, anyway.
When Ehrlich became governor, Steffen says he was dispatched to various state agencies, looking for people to fire. He's also the guy who helped spread those indecent rumors about Mayor Martin O'Malley's marriage and was then fired when his identity became public and he was suddenly perceived as politically inconvenient.
"I'm not going to get into specifics, but I did a lot of things I'm not proud of to this day," Steffen told The Sun's David Nitkin. "I would apologize to a lot of people. To a great degree, I got what I had coming."
Steffen's story ran on the front page of yesterday's Sun. Eight months after he was dismissed over the O'Malley rumors, Steffen contacted Nitkin to revisit some old, unhealthy business and to talk about the administration he once served with great enthusiasm and malignance.
Then, yesterday afternoon, he called my number.
"You're the first person who ever called me a scumbag that I ever called back," Steffen said, recalling an old newspaper column....."
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
MD4Bush PING!
The Dems certainly aren't very imaginative. They pull the same crap on everyone. You're smearing us!
Why smear Steffen - oh I get it, in order to offset the true filth of O'Doherty's black soul.
Convenient too. Actually, too convenient.
If Steffen is even talking to David Nitkin then he must be upset with Ehrlich, since Ehrlich did not stand up and support him when it was the Democratic operatives spreading the rumors about Mayor O'Malley and not Steffen.
The sad thing is that MD4Bush spread a lot more dirt on O'Mally and in a nastier way than Steffen ever did as he was reeling Steffen in. I doubt if we see that point raised in the Washinton Post.
Ehrlich is a self serving jerk.
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Hardly. Steffen was badly used by MD4BUSH, but he also was a liability to Governor Ehrlich. The first Republican governor in 4 decades had to work with 7000 state employees who were probably 6800 democrats. An extraordinary number of these jobs are not covered under Civil Service laws, but are "at-will" employees.
Steffen did not do the Guv any favors when he bragged about fingering people to fire.
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