Congressional candidate healing well

[Freddie Stubbs]

JOE KAFKA

Associated Press


PIERRE, S.D. - Republican congressional candidate Larry Diedrich of Elkton received a clean bill of health Tuesday from his doctor and plans to return to the campaign trail July 20.

Diedrich, 47, had surgery June 16 to fix a leaking heart valve.

Jessica R. Towhey, Diedrich's press secretary, said he has convalesced nicely and is eager to resume campaign travel.

"He's doing very well," said Towhey, who started Tuesday as press secretary for the general election campaign. "He'll take a couple of more weeks and make sure he's completely up to speed and then he'll start running again."

more: http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/special_packages/election2004/9099905.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

[Spinzonner]

1. Do they really expect us to believe

there's a Republican with a heart ?

[existentialist]

3. " there's a Republican with a heart?"

Well, in South Dakota there better be--and must be. Democrats are a minority in this state, nevertheless Stephanie Herseth won in June, and Tim Johnson won in 2002, and some of us are continually trying to persuade a few moderate Republicans to vote Democratic with some modest successes, and remarks disparaging Republicans generally don't help.


Although I must say, that with regard to the Republican leadership, I share your sentiments.

[bleowheels]

2. I swear I hear everyother day that Diedrich is doing well. They're..

really doing their part to "milk" this.

[existentialist]

4. Died rich being well healed . . .

Well, of course Diedrich isn't the only well-healed Republican.

Weak pun aside, a couple of muted facts that South Dakotans (or some of them) are quietly aware of:

1) Diedrich's campaign did not exactly play up the fact that he was going to have surgery shortly after the June 1 special election. He did not run announcing, "Oh, and if I win this special election I'll be in the hospital and we still won't have an active Congressman for much of the remaining term."

And he would have missed much of the remaining term, and South Dakota still would not have had an active Congressman for most of this summer.

2) The Diedrich campaign had to announce something. Diedrich was not spending much time campaigning, when he did he was noticeably short on energy, and they had to explain why. None of these announcements as to how well Diedrich is healing are active campaign efforts so much as they are efforts at damage control--both with regard to his health, and to a minor extent with his credibility.

The Republican Candidate might be viciously attacking (and he may well, although in South Dakota vicious attacks don't go over very well), but instead he is finding the necessity to try to do some damage control without Stephanie Herseth having fired a shot on the issue (which would not have played well in South Dakota.)

Therefore, as far as this news goes, if that's all the Republican candidate can find to talk about, it helps Herseth!