There are few red lines when it comes to a heated political race, but one of them must certainly be this: Don’t give out your opponent’s dying mother’s phone number and encourage people to call her and rant about health care. And yet that’s exactly what Michigan Democrat John Fisher claims the local Republican Party did. To make the situation even more distressing, it’s not like Fisher is running for Senate or in a high-stakes Congressional race. No, this gross move happened in a local state house race.
Fisher’s 91-year-old mother, Isabel Kramb, is currently under hospice care for congestive heart failure. While past Republican mailers had distributed Fisher’s own number, the latest had a direct line to her nursing-home room, which, unfortunately, happened to be registered under Fisher’s name. The leaflet encouraged callers to rail against Obamacare. To a dying woman.
“To direct people to call a suffering woman who deserves peace and comfort is beyond the pale,” Fisher said in a statement. His GOP opponent, Brandt Iden, also condemned the incident, quickly distancing himself from the Michigan Republican Party mailing.
The incident was probably a good-faith mistake, since the number is in Fisher’s name. But is it too much to have an intern test-call any number you plan on mass-mailing?
