Mar 10 2010
D’Annunzio Walks Off Stage at Debate
On Saturday, D’Annunzio got into a flap with officials at the Cumberland County Republican Convention in Fayetteville.
During a forum, candidates drew cards with random questions. When rival Lou Huddleston of Fayetteville was asked if he supports eliminating federal agencies, he replied without mentioning D’Annunzio.
When D’Annunzio tried to respond, organizers told him according to their ground rules, he couldn’t. Party chair Suzanne Rucker took his microphone. He walked off the stage.
On his blog, D’Annunzio said the forum was “put together to enable the home town candidate to attack me while not giving me any opportunity to respond with the truth.”
If the rules were followed consistently throughout the forum then I have to call bullshit on this accusation of there being some kind of conspiracy theory in favor of Lou Huddleston, which is who D’Annunzio is referring to. The rules are the rules. They drew questions at random. Nobody can control who got what question and if they weren’t allowed to opine on the questions of other candidates then that’s the way it is. It’s not the way I would conduct a debate, but the rules should have been understood before it started. On the other hand, if they were allowing other candidates to do follow ups and not D’Annunzio then he has a point to be upset. All of that aside, I think he conducted himself poorly by walking off the stage and it’s more negative press that he doesn’t need. He’s already been getting poked pretty hard by the alternative media.
Lou Huddleston, of course, is taking advantage of this and calling for D’Annunzio to drop out of the race. That’s not necessary. The voters are perfectly capable of making that decision on election day.
This incident is one of two obstacles to put a rut in the D’Annunzio campaign just this week. His top political adviser Jack Hawke resigned from the campaign regarding a dispute over a blog that D’Annunzio has been writing called “Christ’s War” which according to the Charlotte Observer “combines politics with Biblical references and end-times theology.”
Hawke said he advised the candidate to take it down after a February Observer story quoted passages from it.
It disappeared from public view for a while but then reappeared. Another news story about the blog ran Thursday in Raleigh’s News & Observer.
“He took it down, told me it was down and down to stay,” said Hawke, who advised former Gov. Jim Martin and gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory. “Next I knew it was in the N&O telling me it was back up. … I don’t think any candidate should get up at 3 or 4 in the morning, sit down in front of a computer and pour your heart out. It’s just not a smart thing to do.”







