Category: Sean Bielat

Where He’s Building Ace a Robot: Inside Sean Bielat’s Campaign Headquarters

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BOSTON — As everyone knows, this unprecedented effort to defeat Barney Frank really caught fire Sept. 22 when Ace of Spades coined the Official Campaign Slogan:

Sean Bielat For Congress
When he’s not killing terrorists,
he’s building fuckin’ robots

Although this slogan hasn’t yet appeared on billboards in Massachusetts’ 4th District, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. Meanwhile, while the candidate has been busy killing terrorists, building robots and debating Barney Frank, his campaign staff and volunteers keep working hard. Here’s a brief video tour of the Newton office that is main HQ for the Bielat campaign:

The encounter with the fired-up Bielat supporter coming to pick up his yard sign was completely unplanned, by the way, but it certainly is solid proof that there are hard-core conservative voters even in a liberal district like this.

Here you see volunteers manning the phone banks. This photo was taken about noon Sunday, and I’m told that the phone-canvassing operation doesn’t really start cranking up until after 2 p.m. in the afternoon.

Campaign signs adorn the partition inside the office.

This whiteboard shows the phone call totals from Friday. Notice that they called more than 14,000 voters last week from the Newton office, which is one of three Bielat campaign offices in the district. By Election Day, the campaign will probably have made more than 100,000 calls. If you’re in the area and would like to volunteer to help, here are the addresses:

Freetown Office
1 Chace Plaza
Freetown, MA 02717
Norton Office
250 E Main Street
Norton, MA 02070
Newton Office
381 Elliot Street
Newton, MA 02464

Some Bielat campaign swag, with Sunday’s Boston Globe.

No, the campaign isn’t hiring winos to wave signs. This is New Media consultant John LaRosa, who does cool things like running the “Bye Bye Barney” money-bomb.

And this is Terri, the volunteer receptionist who was featured in my American Spectator article Monday. Terri remembers meeting me in Boston’s North End back in January when I was covering the Scott Brown campaign.

Hey, it’s Sean Bielat! He was at WRKO studios for his Monday morning radio debate with Barney Frank, which was pretty cool. But not as cool as killing terrorists or building robots.

SEAN BIELAT for U.S. CONGRESS

UPDATE: Moe Lane reports that Charlie Cook just upgraded MA-4 from “safe” to “likely Democrat,” along with four other previously “safe” Democrat seats, including the AZ-7 seat where Ruth McClung just got endorsed by Sarah Palin. Also upgraded: MN-8, where the Republican challenger is Ace-endorsed Chip Cravaack.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Our Massachusetts friend Pete Da Tech Guy says that in three weeks, Charlie Cook will be upgrading MA-4 to “Holy S#$%!”

On the ‘Beat Barney’ Beat

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At 7 a.m. ET today, Sean Bielat is scheduled to debate Barney Frank on WRKO radio. Meanwhile, I’ve got a new article at The American Spectator:

NEWTON, Massachusetts — Brian Phillips was wearing flip-flop sandals Sunday at the nondescript office near the corner of Elliot and Chestnut streets that is headquarters for one of this fall’s most remarkable congressional campaigns.
Phillips is campaign manager for Sean Bielat, the young Marine officer who is challenging Barney Frank in one of the most solidly Democratic districts in the country. During his 29-year career in Congress, Frank has never faced such a formidable opponent and the surge of support for Bielat’s campaign has clearly rattled the incumbent. Ever since Scott Brown’s triumph in January, the GOP in this state has been fired up . . . and there is a sense among 4th District Republicans that the Democrats have been caught flat-footed.
“They’ve got no operation over there,” Phillips said of the Frank campaign. As Bielat told reporters at a Sept. 26 rally, “They have one campaign office. It’s always empty. We have three. They’re always full.”
Bielat’s Newton office wasn’t full Sunday morning, but it was open and in full swing, with at least three volunteers calling voters in a telephone canvassing operation that has already reached some 30,000 likely voters and, at a pace of more than 2,000 new contacts daily, could approach the 50,000 mark within a week. . . .

Please read the whole thing. BTW, there’s a Sean Bielat money-bomb until midnight.

Beat Barney, Stomp Steny

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We’ve told you before about Sean Bielat, who’s taking on Barney Frank in Massachusetts, and Charles Lollar, who’s challenging Steny Hoyer in Maryland. Both of these men are U.S. Marines, and today they get a big “Semper Fi” shout-out from Ken Blackwell:

While Frank typically wins with 65 to 75 percent of the vote, Bielat is encouraged by internal polls showing him within striking distance of Frank. Scott Brown won the 4th District last year, and Frank’s unabashed support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two of the major protagonists in the housing crisis and the financial meltdown that followed, is a major liability.
To help Frank, the Democrats are sending in their biggest gun whose approval ratings aren’t in the basement — former President Bill Clinton. That’s heavy artillery for a race that’s supposedly already won, so someone is taking Bielat seriously.
Further south, another Marine is taking aim at the number two man in the House, Rep. Steny Hoyer. Hoyer has been in Congress for nearly 30 years and has been a staple in Maryland politics since 1966, when his opponent, Charles Lollar, was not yet born.
Lollar is a Marine who served in combat in Kosovo and is also currently a major in the Marine Corps Reserves. He burst onto the scene as a charismatic speaker at Tea Party rallies in Maryland and across the nation. The 39-year-old businessman decided to take on Hoyer because of his leadership role in advancing a radical liberal agenda under President Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Lollar believes Rep. Hoyer has betrayed the values of a significant portion of Maryland’s 5th Congressional District and no longer views himself as accountable to them.
Hoyer’s strength is in the most populous county in the district, which is predominantly black. But Lollar, a black conservative with an engaging personality, has appealed directly and personally to people who Republicans have not typically approached, asking them for their vote — and they are responding.
National political pundit Dick Morris last week declared the race “winnable” for Lollar, and his campaign has seen a surge of national attention since then, including the endorsement of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. . . .

Read the whole thing. By the way, a source close to the Lollar campaign tells me that since I blogged about their campaign a week ago — and Ace of Spades jumped aboard the “Stomp Steny Express” — they have seen an impressive surge in online fundraising. I don’t want to give numbers, but it’s been tens of thousands of dollars.

Have you given yet? Come on: $20 to help Charles Lollar stomp Steny and another $20 to help Sean Bielat beat Barney.

Professor Glenn Reynolds has promoted the idea of An Army of Davids. How about A Marine Corps of Davids?