South Dakota liberal blogger Todd Epp conceded the obvious last weekend when he told Robert Novak that former/current Daschle campaign manager Steve Hildebrand (who is still being paid by Daschle) was orchestrating the blog attacks on Senator Thune. Novak said:
The 2004 Senate victory in South Dakota of Republican John Thune over then Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle did not end the bitter election campaign. Since the election, at least five South Dakota blogs have appeared with the only apparent purpose of attacking Thune.
Former Daschle staffers openly run two of the blogs, and two others are anonymous. A fifth is run by Todd Epp, who did part-time legal work for Daschle’s campaign. Epp told this column that Steve Hildebrand, Daschle’s campaign manager, learned from Thune’s use of paid bloggers in 2004 and now “is kind of behind some of this.”
A footnote: In its July quarterly report, the Daschle campaign reported more than $1 million in post-election spending, including a $2,000-a-month salary for Hildebrand and thousands more for his consulting firm.
Before Novak's column ran, the still anonymous former Daschle supporters outed themselves. As Novak indicated, the group of former Daschle staffers working under Hildebrand work very closely together. Professor Schaff said this morning that they all went out to Ohio to work in a Congressional election being held tomorrow.
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