On July 23rd, the St. Louis American announced its endorsements for the August 3rd primary. For the 14th State Senate District, they wrote:

Maria Chappelle-Nadal has six years of experience in Jefferson City and is a proven, stalwart progressive battler. Her youthful energy also gives her the edge over Joe Adams, the only other candidate in this race who is free of the taint of major funding by Rex Sinquefield. While we have some concern for her, at times, brash behavior and penchant for picking fights she doesn’t need, we feel she has learned some painful lessons in this regard.

Six years ago, Ms. Chappelle-Nadal was running for State Representative and was part of the first Dean Dozen group. The Dean Dozen were candidates that Democracy for America endorsed in the 2004 election cycle. Besides Ms. Chappelle-Nadal, other members of the first Dean Dozen group were Barack Obama who was then a State Senator running for U.S. Senate and my wife who was running for State Representative here in Connecticut.

It is good to see that Ms. Chappelle-Nadal is doing well, but recently a blog post accusing her of lying was brought to my attention. The blog post highlights this mailer:

The mailer quotes the endorsement saying:

Her youthful energy gives her the edge [and she is] the only candidate in this race who is free from the taint of major funding by Rex Sinquefield.

Except, that isn’t what the endorsement said. The endorsement states that Joe Adams is also free from the taint of Sinquefield. Is Ms. Chappelle-Nadal lying? Is her campaign mailer simply incorrect because of a little creative editing by one of her staffers? Normally, I wouldn’t pay much attention to this.

However, there was a follow-up blog post containing a letter the blogger claims to have received from “an attorney representing Maria Chappelle-Nadal” threatening a law suit if the blog post is not taken down.

The threatened lawsuit has been discussed on a national list of progressive bloggers and the consensus seems to be that the threatened suit is without merit since it appears as if nothing in the blog post is defamatory. The blogger asked for details about claims he has made which Ms. Chappelle-Nadal’s attorney believes are false.

All of this comes back to the initial endorsement. The St. Louis American expressed concern about Ms. Chappelle-Nadal’s “brash behavior and penchant for picking fights she doesn’t need”. Looking at this from afar, it appears as if Ms. Chappelle-Nadal, or at least her attorney is acting brashly and picking a fight that not only does the campaign not need, but has the potential to cause damage in a way that the original blog post does not.

I don’t expect Ms. Chappelle-Nadal or her attorney to apologize for what appears to me to be misstatements in the original mailing or for the ill thought out letter requesting that a blog post be taken down. However, it seems like that would be the wisest course of action.