[UPDATE] Via Hot Air: let the damage control begin!  McMahon shoots the messenger, and completely fails to explain why she delivered the message in the first place.  Remember, folks: fish rots from the head down.

Rep. McMahon is claiming that he wanted to make sure that people knew that the 200K that his opponent Mike Grimm raised last quarter – which is, by the way, quite good for a challenger – wasn’t locally raised.  Well, to start off with: there’s usually no particular stigma involved in getting money from out-of-district, although I suppose that NY-13 might be one of those districts where such things are important.  Secondly, and more importantly: you’d think that if McMahon wanted to prove that Grimm was getting mostly out-of-district money he’d pass out a list of Grimm’s out-of-district donors.  Not a list of Grimm’s Jewish donors.

You’d think.

The file, labeled “Grimm Jewish Money Q2,” for the second quarter fundraising period, shows a list of over 80 names, a half-dozen of which in fact do hail from Staten Island, and a handful of others that list Brooklyn as home.

“Where is Grimm’s money coming from,” said Jennifer Nelson, McMahon’s campaign spokeman. “There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees.”

Yes, Jennifer Nelson, thank you for making sure that we all know that the Jews are bankrolling one of your candidate’s Republican opponents.  I don’t know which would distress me more: that you felt the need to take a shower afterward, or that you didn’t.

As a point of comparison, the campaign also provided in-district and out-of-district fundraising totals from McMahon and Grimm’s G.O.P primary opponent, Michael Allegretti. However, they did not provide an out-of-district campaign filing from Grimm, but only a file of Jewish donors to him.

I suppose that we should be grateful that Rep. McMahon didn’t refer to it as ‘dirty Jew money.’

In public, that is.

Moe Lane

PS: McCain/Palin won NY-13, by the way: for that matter, both McCain and Palin have endorsed Grimm (McCain’s always up for supporting another war veteran and Palin has a soft spot for anti-establishment candidates).  McMahon’s a squatter who snuck in during the 2008 shellacking (and the retirement of Fossella); he’s been playing up his opposition to health care, but as you just saw… progressives will out.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.