[Cross-posted at Blue Hampshire, Daily Kos, Swing State Project, OpenLeft]

I just wanted to share my thanks to everyone involved with Yearly Kos in Chicago this past weekend.  It was a great event and an excellent opportunity to meet some of the folks here at MyDD face-to-face for the first time.  We'll be sharing more videos of our campaign events and my thoughts on the issues over the coming months.

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I know little about New Hampshire Democratic Senate candidate Katrina Swett, but this back-and-forth between Swett and an activist blogger is really obnoxious. 

I have looked through her FEC Report, I wrote a post about it here.  I talked a little about some of the things I found out, how most of the money came from large out of state donors, and if she thought it was ok for those out of state donors to buy her the Democratic nomination.  My follow up question was asking her what she would do with the money she raised that's marked for the general election, about 30% of it, if she lost the nomination.

Swett said she makes no apologies for her fundraising; whoever takes on John Sununu is going to need all the help they can get.  She also said that if she lost the Democratic Nomination, she'd be on the ground `the next day' campaigning for the winner.  Fair enough.

She also told me "Well, if you spend that much time looking through my FEC Report, you need a more interesting life.  I have a few suggestions for you. . ."

Is this how she'll handle tough questions from Democratic Activists?  Tell them to get a more interesting life and stop following the campaign so closely?

Also, as an overall criticism, Katrina Swett is a bit long winded.  I found it difficult to follow what she was saying at times, and even more difficult to find a good quote in the middle of her responses.  I think she's aware of this, because she made a joke about her son reminding her to stay brief in her remarks.

So, I don't know.  Katrina Swett speaks passionately about the issues she cares about, and is obviously committed to defeating John Sununu.  I talked to her after, and she was really very nice.  I wasn't inspired by her safe Democratic positions, but they were light-years ahead of John Sununu.  

A little googling shines a bit more light on her career.  Swett is a somewhat milquetoast candidate who backed Lieberman's independent bid in Connecticut, though her positions are fairly liberal.  Her husband was a two-term Congressman who has endorsed Clinton, and she seems to be the establishment choice in the Democratic primary to face Sununu (her opponent is Steve Marchand).  She actually managed her husband's first campaign, so she has a deep and working knowledge of politics.  Surprisingly, though, she lost to Charlie Bass in 2002 despite dramatically outspending him.  Politics is in her family; her father is Congressman Tom Lantos, a noted Iran hawk (and holocaust survivor).

All in all, Swett seems like a standard 1990s Democrat, a bit contemptuous of activists and into the whole loads of cash thing.  I could be wrong.  But I do want to note that treating progressive activists who want to blog about public politics and policy badly is a good way of getting mentioned on MyDD.

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