For those Republicans who were already concerned about Republican candidate K.T. McFarland's liberal credentials, it just got even worse.
The New York Post has obtained a confidential campaign-strategy memo composed by McFarland when she was considering running against Rep. Carolyn Maloney, and its contents could be considered, as the Post put it, "politically explosive."
McFarland wrote, among other things, that "I believe in a woman's right to choose, stem-cell research and full civil rights for gays. Our family worships in the Episcopal Church, but we are not evangelical."
The disclosure of K.T.'s true beliefs led State Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long to say that "this memo eliminates any possibility of her gaining any support whatsoever from Conservative Party leaders or, for the most part, any conservative Republicans."
McFarland also bragged in her memo that she could raise large sums of campaign cash from a "wide circle" of wealthy friends and from "bulging Rolodexes" of potential supporters: "Our family ZIP code, 10021, contributes more personal money to both Democratic and Republican candidates than any other ZIP code in the country," she wrote.
McFarlands' liberal views can't be much of a surprise to anyone who follows New York politics, and have probably led to the generous publicity she has been receiving from the mainstream media since her announcement, as compared to the relative quiet that greeted the conservative John Spencer.
The Post obtained the memo from prominent GOP strategist John McLaughlin, who said McFarland had given it to his firm as it worked to prepare her planned congressional run against Rep. Maloney.
Since then, McLaughlin started working for Spencer, and now accuses McFarland of engaging in "patently dishonest" behavior by taking his advice for a congressional contest and then deciding to run against his candidate for Senate. His righteous indignation was pretty heavy: "Never in 25 years of this kind of work have I had something this dishonest happen to me. She wanted to run for Congress as a Manhattan liberal and now she's going to run for the Senate trying to get Conservative Party support."
Not that Spencer is perfect by any means. His obscenity-laced tirades against those who disagree with him are legendary, according to the Poughkeepsie Journal, and The New York Times reminded its readers a couple of weeks ago that he was caught up in a scandal while he was Mayor of Yonkers; specifically, that he fathered two children out of wedlock with his Chief of Staff, raised her salary from $52,000 to $138,000, and later divorced his wife to marry his employee.
Meanwhile, Mcfarland has been married for over 20 years, stayed at home to raise their five kids, and from all accounts has had a happy and successful family life. But at least Spencer is pro-life, right?
