Despite hopes by Hull’s Campaign that the controversy would die, Illinois NOW is demanding Hull stake out a strong position against Domestic Violence.
“We still haven’t gotten the kind of emphatic rejection of domestic violence . . . that we’ve been looking for from him,” Chicago NOW President Jennifer Koehler said. “We waited three days and still don’t have answers, so we decided to step it up a little bit.”
In response, Hull has said he has already made his position clear,
Speaking to reporters in Springfield, Hull said he does take domestic violence seriously and thought he had answered all of NOW’s concerns several months ago as part of a questionnaire the group gave all candidates.
What Hull is missing is that the response they want is for him to highlight any stands he has in relation to Domestic Violence. Regardless of whether he has answered questions previously, the expectation is that he essentially takes a day and addresses how he would support victims and punish perps.
The problem is that this is going to take him off message longer than just doing it. Campaigns hate these problems because they want to stay on issue, but what they miss is that if they don’t address them immediately, they’ll be off message anyway. Evidence? Look at the article and the only real mention of of drug prices is in the first paragraph that is essentially saying he can’t talk about his message because of the domestic violence issue:
U.S. Democratic Senate candidate Blair Hull on Monday traveled the state promoting his fourth trip to Canada to buy low-cost prescription drugs for seniors, but he found himself once again on the defensive, battling questions surrounding his 1998 divorce in which his ex-wife accused him of violent behavior.
Right now, the Hull Campaign is a case study in how not to deal with problems that creep up in the campaign. They shouldn’t be defensive, they should take the offense, highlight his positions on domestic violence for a day, write a letter expressing his support for NOW’s domestic violence initiatives and move on to the issues they want to highlight for the for primary.
Archie– I have to agree. The Hull campaign is not being responsible to their candidate at all. As he’s a novice in this business, I’m going to assume that he’s following the advice of his handlers on how to handle this, and whoever those people are are really botching this thing up. But who knows–maybe by Thursday.