The MA 4th congressional district race has been catching fire over the past week. As national blogger and media interest continues to grow, Sean Bielat released the details of an internal poll last week showing that he is legitimately within 10 points of Barney Frank with plenty of upside ahead of him. Frank’s campaign responded first by insulting Sarah Palin (“those numbers are as dumb as Sarah Palin” – go figure) and then by claiming that they will win by 20 points “no matter what we do”.

But instead of releasing their own polling details, the Frank campaign belied their own arrogance by bringing in Bill Clinton to stump for Barney yesterday. The CSM ran with the headline “Can Clinton save Barney Frank?”

At the same time Sean Bielat held a counter rally at the green in Taunton, which attracted an energetic crowd of around 350 supporters.

WBUR summary of the situation

In a roundabout way, Bill Clinton acknowledged that Barney Frank has a tougher race this year than he’s had in a long time. Clinton told the crowd in the Taunton High School gym Sunday that if Republicans succeed in making the election about how Americans feel about the economy, Democrats are in trouble.
…
But Clinton was there, and voters in the 4th Congressional District are asking about Sean Bielat, the fair-skinned, trim 35-year-old running against Barney Frank. Bielat is a Marine Reservist who says his priorities are in line with the Tea Party principles of smaller government…
…
“First is the economic recovery, and I think we do that by setting a stable regulatory environment so that businesses can make longer-term investment decisions because they know what regulation is coming, what they need to prepare for, and second is immediate tax relief in the form of lower withholding from paychecks,” Bielat said.

Next, Bielat, a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, wants to reform Social Security and Medicare.

“If we don’t, this country is going to look like Greece in a generation. We’re going to be broke,” he said.

Bielat is part of a rebel movement of young Republicans who want to throw out not just the Democrats, but also their own party leadership. He says the Congressional Republican he thinks is doing the best job is Paul Ryan, of Wisconsin. Like Ryan, Bielat believes the party lost its way by spending big in the Bush years.

Finally, check out this stunning comment made by Barney Frank right after the Bill Clinton event:

“I didn’t just get Bill Clinton to come to Taunton,” Frank said. “I got Sean Bielat to come to Taunton. I noticed he’d said he’d been thinking about having an event here and finally decided to do it. Frankly, I think it’s the first public event he had in Taunton. Maybe it was a two-for for Taunton.”

Barney is all arrogance all the time, but between the lines you can see his fear.

FOLKS, THIS IS A RACE! DONATE TO SEAN BIELAT TODAY AND RETIRE BARNEY FRANK!

http://retirebarney.com

http://seanforcongress.com

In this Boston Herald piece, Barney Frank is questioned about his decision to bring Bill Clinton in to campaign for him next weekend.  Barney denies that bringing in Clinton means he’s desperate, but to me he sounds awfully defensive:

Barney Frank:

“It’s called campaigning. I’m trying to win an election and that’s what you do in campaigns. You do it to get votes,” Frank fumed yesterday. “If I campaign effectively, that means I’m scared, but if I don’t campaign, that means I’m arrogant.

Would you ask people why they buy TV ads?” Frank added. “Are you supposed to campaign ineffectively? Should I bring in unpopular people to campaign?“

Sean Bielat:

“Calling in Bill Clinton, a former president of the United States, to stump for you is a pretty desperate move for a guy who has been elected 14 times already and who has a 10-times advantage in fundraising . . .

“It’s like David and Goliath, and Goliath just got a tag team from his older brother,” Bielat said. He issued a statement saying the Clinton move shows Frank is “running scared.”

Barney Frank:

“It sounds like he thinks I have no right to campaign,” Frank said. “It’s right-wing political bias. You don’t say it when a Republican brings in somebody.”

The Greater Boston Tea Party:

Greater Boston Tea Party President Christen Taylor said it “means he thinks he can lose.”

“This means he’s campaigning for the first time in 20-something years . . . Conventional wisdom is out the door,” she said, adding she believes Bielat will draw independent voters like Scott Brown did.

All this as the OneUnited story keeps getting worse for Barney.

Here is an excerpt from Sean Bielat’s press release on the matter:

“The whole sordid mess is an outrageous abuse of power and a slap in the face to every taxpayer,” said Bielat, a successful businessman and Marine. “Barney Frank used his influence and his office to change the rules at the request of Maxine Waters to help her protect her financial investments. There is no other plausible explanation. OneUnited should have never gotten a taxpayer-funded bailout, and wouldn’t have without Barney Frank’s involvement.”

By blatantly ignoring warnings from regulators and changing the rules so they only applied to OneUnited, Frank was able to funnel more than $12 million to help the bank stay afloat. A recent House of Representatives ethics report detailing charges against Waters shows her financial investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in OneUnited would have been worthless if the bank had not received the bailout. The report says that Waters approached Frank about the problem and, because there was a clear conflict of interest with Waters’ involvement, Frank told her to “stay out of it” and that he would “handle it”. Frank has publicly admitted he wrote legislation that specifically allowed OneUnited to qualify for the money.

There has been no public polling on this race yet. Only 2 people have real polling data on MA-04: One is Sean Bielat. The other is Barney Frank.

This is a winnable race for Sean Bielat, and no one knows it better than Barney Frank.

Interesting facts:
- Scott Brown won this district in January
- Barney won his last election with a lower percent of the vote than any other Mass Dem
- Barney is flipping and flopping and lying about Fannie and Freddie
- Barney has been famously insulting town hall meetings in the south of the district (not just the dining room table, mind you!)
- Sean is a fantastic candidate running a smart and aggressive campaign
- 2010 is “that year”

Please help Sean if you can!

Sean Bielat for Congress
Retire Barney Frank!