Way back during the 2005 gubernatorial campaign, I often compared then-Sen. Russ Potts to Ahab for the way he maniacally pursued the GOP nomination against Jerry Kilgore. Russ was in the race only because he believed Kilgore had snubbed him. And he took that perceived slight all the way to November, and eventually, oblivion.
Good times, good times.
Potts barely merits a footnote these days, but the bizarre pettiness that animated his later years in public life still lingers. And it seems that crabbed shadow has found a willing, if not exactly robust, host in the RTD’s Jeff Schapiro.
We can see it dancing behind Jeff’s spectacles in his latest video diary entry. Jeff is out to get Bob McDonnell, by hook, crook, innuendo or sneer.
The reason Bob McDonnell got out-of-town this week? Not a “trade mission.” Only saps believe that. McDonnell was fleeing the furies — ultrasounds, one gun a month, and others yet to be named. Not since the McDonnell thesis days on 2009 has Jeff felt such tingling. These bills are like macaca, but oh so much better, because they can be tattooed on the backside of an otherwise squeaky-clean Republican who might have a chance at the political big time.
Maybe Jeff is just burnishing his credentials in advance of the RTD’s sale, hoping the New York Times has room for just one more aging lefty crank on its payroll.
Or perhaps he’s just a bit bitter that McDonnell and others are growing their media profiles beyond his reach. They never needed him to conduct their affairs. But now they don’t even need to pay him any attention at all. It’s Jeff who has become the footnote, and that rankles.
From hell’s heart, which can now be found on Franklin Street in River City, Jeff stabs at thee…
