From House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s weekly press conference:

Q: Paul Hackett was in town yesterday, I believe. You met with him. Is that correct?

REP. PELOSI: Yeah.

Q: Did you try to discourage him from running for the Senate?

REP. PELOSI: Yes, I had the opportunity to meet with Paul Hackett, who is a very dynamic, wonderful person. And I have — just so you know about me, I never try to discourage people not (sic) to run for anything. I just don’t do that. It’s — they do what they do. I just wanted — get his feel for the politics of the region. I think he knows the high regard that we all have for Sherrod Brown, our colleague here.

But it was not my — I was hoping that he might be interested — I’ll be very honest with you — in running for Congress, for the House. He made such a great run before. And of course there’s even more — all that happened in that race was manifested so clearly on the floor of the House during the debate on Mr. Hunter’s resolution.


Now here’s some fun… my gnomes in D.C. had told me a while ago that the Minority Leader wasn’t too happy that Brown was contesting Hackett. The Murtha incident seems to have gotten everyone talking about the 2nd district again. The problem is that from what I’m seeing on the ground Hackett’s operations are going too good. They missed the chance to strongly back Hackett early on. He could have won that race if they weren’t asleep at the wheel. (I warned you, guys… You should have listened.)

BTW, Congressman Brown… pressure on Schmidt in the special concerning CAFTA might very well have helped you win that fight. If they had seen Schmidt getting her ass handed to her on CAFTA and trade I’m betting several Congressman would have blinked. Delay’s advantage was on the House floor… your’s was public opinion. Democrats in Washington need to pull their heads out of the beltway and see the whole playing field.

Also… Jean Schmidt was discussed:

Q: Did you discuss your decision to support Mr. Murtha’s resolution with Mr. Hoyer before you announced it last week? Have you two talked about your own personal feelings about this before putting out —

REP. PELOSI: Let me say this. This isn’t about feelings. This is about thinking. When Mr. Murtha presented his resolution, I guess — but what he — when he made his presentation to our caucus, that day he received a tumultuous response from our caucus. I told our caucus at the time, because of my regard for Mr. Murtha, his superior knowledge to any of us on the subject of national security, that I would be supporting his initiative, but I would choose the time to do it. So it was very clear right from the start where I was on this.

Yes?

Q: Following up on the question about Murtha and Jean Schmidt, how much did that rhubarb in the House floor right before Thanksgiving sort of codify the Iraq issue going into next year for people, because this brought this to the floor, there was a lot of fireworks, and people saw this everywhere, even parodied on “Saturday Night Live.”

REP. PELOSI: Well, it certainly raised the visibility of it, and it really made Mr. Murtha a folk hero. He was becoming one anyone, but it really took it to another place because — well, for obvious reasons. But I don’t think there ’s anyplace Mr. Murtha goes in the country that he is not recognized and saluted.

In fact, one of the stories that he tells is that, you know, he always goes to the hospitals to visit the troops. And he was out there recently — and I’ve gone with him a number of times; this time I wasn’t with him. But when you go, the young people, they’re lying in bed, they’re — you know, they’re hurt. But one of the troops said he didn’t want him to come in the room until he was ready, and when he was ready he had gotten himself out of bed and was standing at attention saluting Mr. Murtha, which I thought was a beautiful story.

So, no, I think it just raised the visibility of it and showed that calling a person like Mr. Murtha a coward was not something that had any currency on the floor of the House or in the country.