{"id":5510,"date":"2026-09-07T09:55:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T05:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=5510"},"modified":"2026-09-07T06:21:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T02:21:41","slug":"new-legislator-psame-pseudocampaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=5510","title":{"rendered":"New legislator, psame pseudocampaign"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve spent more than half my life studying the dark art of pseudocampaigning, that unholy alchemy practiced by incumbent politicians who spin informational brochures into thinly-veiled campaign literature. I “learned” from the master, one Thomas W. Libous, state senator from New York back in the last millenium, who brought the practice to rarified air. (Flew a bit too close to the sun however and after being removed from office<\/a> spent the rest of his life on house arrest, but never mind all that.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017 I observed that my then congressmember, one Barbara Comstock (“R”-Va.), was taking up that mantle<\/a>, and, if not at Libousonian levels, was doing quite well for herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now we have Comstock’s heir, my congressman, Suhas Subramanyam, who has sent me not one, not two, but three full-color flyers in the past week, extolling his virtues, noting that he’s “fighting” for me (against whom I’m not sure), and “working hard on my behalf.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking up causes with which I disagree<\/em> and distributing campaign literature at my expense<\/em> is more like how I’d describe it, but maybe they couldn’t squeeze that all in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Must be an election year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we wonder why incumbent congressmen are reelected at like 95%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve spent more than half my life studying the dark art of pseudocampaigning, that unholy alchemy practiced by incumbent politicians who spin informational brochures into thinly-veiled campaign literature. I “learned” from the master, one Thomas W. Libous, state senator from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5511,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5510\/revisions\/5511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}