McCain keeps hiring smart staffers (hat tip Bluejersey).

Jill Hazelbaker, battle tested in New Jersey this year as Tom Kean Jr.'s Communications Director, is headed to John McCain's presidential campaign. She will serve as Communications Director for McCain's campaign in New Hampshire.

Jill Hazelbaker it seems has a little penchant for posting on liberal blogs and lying about it. Bluejersey is the site that caught her, and the New York Times had the story:

The Internet postings came from people calling themselves "cleanupnj,""usedtobeblue" and "AmadeusNJ." They  said they were concerned Democrats, "lifelong liberals," and they were troubled  by the United States senator  from New Jersey,  Robert Menendez...

But the liberal Democratic hosts of BlueJersey.com, the Web log where such comments were posted, smelled something fishy about the postings, and said they traced them to a computer inside the  campaign headquarters of Mr. Menendez's Republican opponent, Thomas H. Kean Jr.

Read this post documenting how often she lied to the press about what happened.  It's actually kind of amazing.  There were even blog sockpuppets defending her personally.

My favorite is this one.

Also, you guys are upset about the attacks on Menendez, but isn't it a little bit hypocritical to then attack his press secretary. Not to mention, Kean is winnng so she must be doing something right. Just my thoughts.

Ah, the last honest man hires the last honest press secretary.

There's more...

Cross-posted from Blue Jersey

New Hampshire beware! Jill Hazelbaker is coming to a blog near you!

Jill Hazelbaker, battle tested in New Jersey this year as Tom Kean Jr.'s Communications Director, is headed to John McCain's presidential campaign. She will serve as Communications Director for McCain's campaign in New Hampshire.

Last September, Hazelbaker spent valuable work time posing as a Democrat on Blue Jersey -- from Junior's office!

There's more...

Republicans seem to be learning bad lessons from Dan Gerstein and Lee Siegel about lying and sockpuppetry.

The Internet postings came from people calling themselves "cleanupnj,""usedtobeblue" and "AmadeusNJ." They said they were concerned Democrats, "lifelong liberals," and they were troubled by the United States senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez.

Mr. Menendez, they said, was up to no good. For instance, did you notice that a Congressional lawyer who Mr. Menendez said cleared him of ethics issues regarding a controversial real estate deal died last year? Wasn't there something fishy about that?

But the liberal Democratic hosts of BlueJersey.com, the Web log where such comments were posted, smelled something fishy about the postings, and said they traced them to a computer inside the campaign headquarters of Mr. Menendez's Republican opponent, Thomas H. Kean Jr.

They suspect the person behind the postings, which have appeared on the site regularly since July, is Mr. Kean's campaign spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker. Ms. Hazelbaker called the accusations "nonsense," and said neither she nor anyone else she knows of in the office had anything to do with the postings. "I've never e-mailed them nor posted on the Web site," she said on Wednesday. "It's a blog. You can't believe what's posted on blogs." She declined to make Mr. Kean available to discuss the matter.

The Kean campaign's technical adviser said that the Internet protocol, or I.P., address that linked the posts to the Kean headquarters was an old one, "from over a month ago." But an e-mail message Ms. Hazelbaker sent to a reporter on Wednesday shares the same I.P. address.

Hazelbaker simply lied to reporters, and Juan Melli of Bluejersey and official rabid lamb leader of New Jersey busted her (check out the funny comments by Scott Shields and Matt Miller).  I'm not worried about the New Jersey race poll numbers - most people in New Jersey probably don't know that it's Tom Kean Jr. running rather than Tom Kean Sr yet, but they will in a few weeks.

Blogs like Bluejersey and Colorado Confidential provide an essential platform for progressives to achieve power.  I have no idea why Tom Kean's spokesperson is posting on Bluejersey and lying about it to New York Times reporters.  She's probably just sort of stupid and arrogant.  But it's good that Hazelbaker getting busted flat-out now when it doesn't matter, so that journalists will know to double-check her nonsense when the campaign really heats up in November.

There's more...

(Distilled from a post at Blue Jersey. This just has to go on the front page--Chris)

After Blue Jersey exposed another Tom Kean Jr campaign lie yesterday (which state media is now picking up as well), the campaign went into panic mode. Their spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, registered multiple accounts on Blue Jersey and posted what were obvious "concern troll" comments. The accounts were registered within 10 minutes of each other, the comments from the different users were posted 15 minutes apart, and both comments were posted from the same exact IP address (70.90.20.85), which is for a Comcast business account that can be traced to a node within 5 miles of the campaign. But there's more. Below is the header information from an email sent out by the campaign spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker. Some information has been removed to protect the innocent, but the important thing here is that Jill Hazelbaker's IP address is 70.90.20.85:

Return-Path: <jill@tomkean.com>
Received: from tomkean.com (mail.xquizit.com [66.194.14 8.20])
by XXXXX with ESMTP id XXXXX;
Received-SPF: neutral (XXXXX is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of jill@tomkean.com)
Received: from KFS05 [70.90.20.85] by tomkean.com with ESMTP
(SMTPD32-8.15) id XXXXX;
From: "Jill Hazelbaker"<jill@tomkean.com>
To: "XXXXX"

This is the same IP address that several troll comments last night were posted from. It's pretty obvious that those comments were posted by Hazelbaker herself. The content of the comments is a dead giveaway. In one comment, "cleanupnj"says:

"What happened to Mr. Mark Davis, the counsel who apparently gave Boss Bob "verbal approval" to line his pockets with tax-payer funded federal money."

This sounds like nearly the exact same thing Jill Hazelbaker said to reporter Herb Jackson in his story today:

"Menendez said it was another person that originally gave him approval, now his corroborating witness doesn't remember the act of approval."

And then there's this highly defensive comment from "usedtobeblue" protesting attacks on Hazelbaker:

Also, you guys are upset about the attacks on Menendez, but isn't it a little bit hypocritical to then attack his press secretary.

Wow. I'm sure that's what random, rank-and-file supporters are thinking: "Why is that blog attacking the press secretary?" Uh huh.

And perhaps the most damning evidence, again from "cleanupnj" (emphasis mine):

She is also married to Russ Feingold's legislative director.  Unbiased source?  A conflict of interest certaintly. And the woman isn't even sure if she gave Boss Bob approval anyway.

That was not public information until Herb Jackson's article appeared this morning. That's something only Herb and the people he spoke with for the article, like the campaign spokespeople, could have known at 7:15 PM yesterday.

In an embarassingly funny twist, even after being exposed as trolls, the campaign created yet another account and posted another "concern troll" comment, pretending to be an ardent democrat who used to enjoy reading this blog. Again, with the same exact IP address.

All hilariousness aside, this raises serious questions about the Kean Jr campaign. If they're willing to lie about simple things like this, what else would they lie about to win? Does Tom Kean Jr condone this type of unethical behavior in his campaign? And will he fire all those involved?