The Honorable Ted Stevens
United States Senate
522 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Ted Stevens,
This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
I request that copies of the following documents be provided to me: Any correspondence (including e-mails, phone records, letters, and meeting notes) between you and/or your office and the Michael McGavick U.S. Senate campaign concerning the bill you introduced in November 2005 to open up the Puget Sound to oil tankers at the Cherry Point docks near Bellingham.
I would also like any correspondence between you and/or your office and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) regarding Michael McGavick’s campaign for Senate and any correspondence regarding the Cherry Point docks bill.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Josh Feit
If you could actually do Freedom of Information Act Requests to members of Congress (they’re not subject to the Act), they probably would have just sent me a copy of McGavick’s February 21 letter. This is the same letter the Seattle Times quoted on cue after McGavick staged a press conference where he kicked off his campaign (again) and, with perfect timing, took credit for Stevens’s decision earlier that day to temporarily withdraw the Cherry Point bill. In the February 21 letter, McGavick wrote, “I must very respectfully reiterate my opposition to your plan. Puget Sound’s ecosystem is cherished by the entire Pacific Northwest.”
The communications I actually want to see, though, are the back-and-forth e-mails between McGavick and Stevens and the NRSC that outline this whole prefabricated campaign stunt—a stunt that had McGavick visiting D.C. to lobby against the bill right after Stevens introduced it, and then taking the mic after Stevens withdrew the bill to read lines like, “I thought, ‘shoot, why don’t I just go see him?'” (Again, quoted on cue by the Seattle Times.)
The idea was to juxtapose himself against the—let’s see, bitchy?—Senator Maria Cantwell, who filibustered Stevens on Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) drilling. Indeed, promoting McGavick’s “I’m not a bitch” campaign theme (or “Northwest Civility,” as McGavick calls it), Stevens told the press: “Mike McGavick came to me and said it ought to be discussed,” as opposed to Cantwell, who “attacked me in the press” regarding the Cherry Point bill.
How stupid does McGavick’s media team think we are—a media team that a former Stevens staffer named Elliot Bundy heads up, by the way.
This was a crafted media attack, prepackaged to both undermine Cantwell’s advantage over McGavick as the environmental candidate (he supports drilling in ANWR while Cantwell—with her 90 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters—does not) and to cast McGavick as a civil gentleman to the shrewish Cantwell.
When and if Stevens’s office obliges me, and actually turns over the full extent of their correspondence with McGavick on this issue, I will report back.
