ShareThisBy MICHAEL COLLINS
Monday, November 06, 2006
A congresswoman was accused of lying about her athletic prowess. A state lawmaker in Kansas got into a fight with a cockroach.
And a candidate in Oklahoma hatched an unusual scheme to protect students in school shootings. His plan? Equip every student with used textbooks thick enough to stop a bullet.
There are two things you can pretty much count on during the course of any political campaign. One, somebody will win and somebody will lose. Two, a few candidates will do or say something truly bizarre.
This has been a particularly good year for political theater of the absurd.
Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, is best known for nearly causing a riot on the House floor last year with her "cowards cut and run, Marines never do" dressing down of a fellow congressman.
But voters in Schmidt's suburban Cincinnati district know her as a marathon runner who boasts of her athletic feats and sometimes compares her physical stamina to political endurance.
One of her opponents, independent write-in candidate Nathan Noy, is clearly unimpressed. Noy filed a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission that accused Schmidt of lying about how often she has run in marathons _ and about how well she finished in those races in which she actually did compete.
Schmidt's staff responded by releasing pictures of the congresswoman posing with her medals and calling Noy's ploy a new low. The elections commission agreed. The panel threw out the complaint.
In Kansas, state Rep. Vaughn Flora faced a different type of complaint. Flora, a Democrat, was charged with assaulting a cockroach _ or more precisely, a protester dressed like the creepy-crawly insect.
The protester, the head of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, contended he suffered cuts when Flora ripped off his mask during a gubernatorial debate at the Kansas State Fair. Flora was charged with battery and is awaiting a pretrial hearing.
In a year of unconventional ideas, Republican Bill Crozier's proposal to help students defend themselves during a school shooting stands out as one of the most bizarre.
Crozier, who is running for state superintendent of public instruction in Oklahoma, says that if elected he will place thick used textbooks under every student's desk. Students could use the books as shields to deflect bullets in the event of a school shooting, Crozier says.
Crozier even tested the theory himself: He and some helpers filmed themselves pumping rounds from an AK-47 assault rifle and various pistols into calculus, science, language and telephone books. The assault rifle penetrated the books. The pistols did not, leading Crozier to conclude that his defense strategy just might work.
Name recognition is a big plus for any candidate for public office. So William Fenrick, a little-known contender for sheriff in Platteville, Wis., changed his legal name to Andy Griffith, the actor who played a fictional sheriff on television.
Elections officials in Ottawa County, Mich., got some unwanted attention thanks to a typo. The county had to reprint 170,000 ballots when the "l" was dropped from the word "public" in a proposed constitutional amendment.
When it comes to campaign drama, Florida Congresswoman Katherine Harris deserves an Oscar. Or at least a nomination.
Harris, a Republican struggling to unseat Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., has a thing for pancake makeup, over-the-top theatrics and Starbucks lattes.
Former staffers, who have fled her beseiged campaign in droves, told reporters that she throws cell phones during fits of anger, berates her aides as idiots and demands to know in advance where she can find the nearest Starbucks along each of her campaign stops.
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been accused of just about everything during her years in public life. But never before has she been accused of this.
Republican rival Kathleen McFarland told a GOP crowd last March that Clinton had been spying in her bedroom window and dispatching helicopters to fly over her home.
McFarland had hoped to challenge Clinton this fall but lost the GOP primary to former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, who later trashed the senator's looks and reportedly suggested to the New York Daily News that she had undergone "millions of dollars" in plastic surgery.
Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Montana, cemented his status as one of the Senate's most vulnerable incumbents with several off-the-wall comments.
Burns ripped into a firefighting crew whom he accused of doing a lousy job of battling a wildfire in his home state and singled out one fireman in particular for expletive-laden abuse. He also joked that one of his handymen might be an illegal alien and reported during a debate that President Bush has a secret plan to end the war in Iraq.
Not even public humiliation could silence Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga.
McKinney, who once suggested that George Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance and later got in trouble for slapping a cop, was trounced by a virtual unknown in a run-off election in Georgia last August.
After her concession speech, McKinney gathered her supporters on stage and tried to sing along with "Dear Mr. President," the anti-Bush anthem recorded by the pop star Pink. She then went on a tirade about Bush, the war in Iraq, electronic voting machines and the Great Satan, aka, the media.
According to reviews, her singing went over about as well as her performance in office.
