Jon Fleischman posted yesterday on FlashReport about last week's 60AD Republican candidate forum in the beautiful City of Orange. Red County/San Bernadino also wrote up the debate.
The buzz, such as it is, coming out of the debate focuses not so much on the candidates as on the peculiar nature of candidate Curt Hagman's entourage. Per FlashReport:
Well, at this function, in the sleepy City of Orange, I was definitely taken aback to come into the Council Chambers only to find four rather intimidating gentlemen, all in dark suits with short, cropped hair, standing "at the ready" in various strategic locations around the room. There was quite a buzz going on as I spoke with some of my friends who where there, wondering aloud who there were... I first checked to see if they were required security -- sometimes public facilities will require a private security company to be contracted in order to approve use of a facility. Nope.
So, I inquired of one of them (the big dude on the right in this very bad photo from my LG Chocolate cell phone) if they were here with any candidate. He told me that he was there with Curt Hagman, and said he was with some company (I don't remember the acronym, but it sounded very clandestine). Hmmm. I thought to myself -- I know that Curt, a really nice guy, is from neighboring San Bernardino County. Maybe they just do things differently. Then I remembered with Curt does for a living (which never came up at the debate, by the way).
I did take the opportunity to ask Curt if he knew who they were. He said, "They are my friends. They support my campaign."
You can read Jon's entire post here.
"Friends"? "Supporters"? Come on. Reminds me of that Jon Lovitz character on SNL - yeah, that's the ticket! Can't Hagman just come out and say, "They're my security detail. I'm a bail bondsman. Capiche?"? That's certainly rings more authentic than the cagily pretending they're actually campaign supporters -- unless dark suits and ear pieces are standard issue to Hagman campaign volunteers.