Representative Issa’s PR machine hits a snag known as “The New Yorker”

Ryan PurdyRyan Purdy 12 Comments

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Presumably The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza told Darrell Issa that he was going to do an article about him, with or without him… or at least implied as much. Issa would have been better off going the “without” route. In an article ironically titled “Don’t Look Back“, writer Ryan Lizza does nothing but look back. Now that Issa is the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Democrats and their interchangeable partners in the media have a sudden interest in looking back. Issa will likely investigate everything from WikiLeaks to Afghan corruption to Fannie Mae. Lizza writes a meandering, undisciplined 7,829 word article predominantly on Issa’s past.  He concedes Issa’s constituents have no real interest in it. “In 2000, two years after losing the Senate primary campaign, Issa easily won a congressional seat in a conservative district near San Diego, where voters seemed unconcerned about the then two-decade-old tales from his youth.” I won’t rehash the decades old tales here, because that would be to do Lizza’s bidding.

So, a liberal writer finds little interest in the past when it can damage a liberal, but has a keen interest in a conservative’s past when it can damage him. So where’s the news there? There isn’t any to be found there. It is found in the all access pass that Lizza gets to Issa’s D.C. office. Ironically it is Kurt Bardella, Issa’s 27 year old spokesman, and supposed media wunderkind, that becomes the news… and not the good kind. “Issa calls him ‘my secret weapon,’ he fiercely screens all interviews. Bardella has a reputation as one of the savviest young spokesmen on Capitol Hill, someone who understands the complicated new media environment.”

If boasting non-stop is savvy, then Bardella is the savviest of them all: “Some people in the press, I think, are just lazy as hell. There are times when I pitch a story and they do it word for word. That’s just embarrassing.” Referring to the recent incident when Howard Kurtz thought he was talking to Issa but was in fact talking to Bardella, he argues that he was not trying to dupe Kurtz: “I think anyone who knows me well enough knows I’m far too fond of myself to abdicate my own identity in favor of someone else’s.”

Bardella brags about his strategy to concern himself with D.C. media primarily and hometown reporters secondarily: “My goal is very simple,” he said. “I’m going to make Darrell Issa an actual political figure. I’m going to focus like a laser beam on the five hundred people here who care about this crap, and that’s it.” God complex anyone?

Bardella also weighs in as an unsettling half psychologist/half father figure regarding his boss: “Darrell’s sensitive about fixating too much on his past,” Bardella said. “Obviously, the stuff that happened . . .” His voice trailed off. “We can talk about it, as well we should. It is part of his past, but it does make him somewhat wary.”

The writer Ryan Lizza follows Issa and Bardella to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where Issa is treated like a rock star by many attendees due to his tenure as the chairman of the trade association.  This seems like an unmistakable positive for Issa in the article, and it is… until Bardella mouths off in front of Lizza like he’s auditioning for Jersey Shore.  Talking about a mobile phone app featured at the trade show that starts your car, of all things, Bardella says, “They don’t need any bells or whistles or naked women. But I enjoy the ones that do. I’m a guy, you know. Nothing wrong with admiring God’s work—the plastic surgeon’s work, too, I’m sure. Some of these chicks, though, I just want to feed, because they’re really, really thin. I’m, like, ‘God, eat something!’ ”

Bardella may have found out that Lizza is not the “lazy as hell” type of reporter that he brags about using like a tool.  Instead Bardella’s reckless quotes made a story that would have been a glorified Wikipedia entry on Issa, with a few new quotes from old Issa associates who sounded like jilted ex lovers, into a real story.  It’s a story about a brash spokesman who got outsmarted and did his boss’ image no favors.

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Comments 12

  1. The MSM has been trashing Darrell Issa for more than a
    decade. But ss the old Timex watch slogan says, “He
    takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

    The Left has consistently underestimated Rep. Issa, and
    they always will. They thought they has finished him off
    a dozen years ago…….but they were wrong then, and they
    are again this time as well.

    Message to Beltway Insiders: You are DREAMING if you
    think you can bulldoze, bully or silence Darrell Issa with
    Supermarket-Tabloid-level nonsense.

  2. This part of the profile worries me:
    “You’ve got to move from the right to the center,” Issa told me. “If there was a blog with five listeners or viewers, I had to be on it. Now I have to be on fewer media, but more substantive media.

    I hope this doesn’t mean Rep. Issa will stop showing up on SD Rostra. Or maybe by now we count as “substantive media.” Congressman, please don’t forget your hometown media now that you’ve gone big time!

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    Author

    Jim: Well said. I agree wholeheartdly. I just hope his spokesman doesn’t provide any more distracting and irrelevant tabloid material to the press.
    Bradley: Yes, that quote bothered me too. What is entailed in moving from right to center? Usually nothing good. And yes, I would sure hope that SD Rostra makes his “substantive media” list!

  4. With a gerrymandered seat (and assuming such Congressional seats stay “reasonably” gerrymandered), Issa can do whatever he wants — within the bounds of the law. Unless, there’s a substantial scandal or criminal activity on his part, he has DE FACTO lifetime tenure.

    What that means is that, if he decides to move to the center, his constituents will have no practical way to bring him back to a more limited government position.

    And, BTW, Issa — while in Congress — has officially endorsed several North County area tax increases. I think he even signed a ballot argument or two.

    Issa has NEVER been a strong fiscal conservative. And the history of incumbents is that — the longer in office — the more they favor big government.

  5. As an avid New Yorker reader I found the article more dull than anything else. The writer could have focused on the Congressman’s current position which would have been of general interest. Instead he pursued well worn stories from the past… the distant past. The material the article from DEI’s press sec Kurt Bardella was un-necessary, not really part of the larger story, and salacious. Whether Kurt said those things or not they were not really part of the larger story. Now I canceled my subscription to Harpers half a dozen years ago because the writing got too biased and too dull. Hoping not to have to do the same with the New Yorker.

  6. Brad and Ryan:

    I had the privilege of working with Rep. Issa in three tough election campaigns. The NEXT time he backs down, or soft pedals his beliefs, will be the FIRST time he does so.

    It’s been widely reported the White House regards him as their #1 foe in the Congress. This article looks like an attempt to punish him in advance, by undermining his own political base. Draw your own conclusions about the credibility of this account.

  7. The facts show Darrell Issa has ALWAYS been a fiscally conservative member of the US House of Representatives.

    Who Says so?

    (1) The National Tax Limitation Committee, (2) the National Taxpayers Union, and (3) the Club for Growth.

    Here are Issa’s “correct” vote scores from these groups over his terms of office….National Tax Limitation Comm: [86% ‘correct’ in 2001-02, 81% in 2003-04]…..the Club for Growth: [67% ‘correct’ in 2006, 89% in 2007, 97% in 2008] ….the National Taxpayers Union [62% in 2006, 85% in 2007, 81% in 2008].

    Source: Michael Barone’s “Almanac of American Politics” from the 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010 editions[.

    GERRY-MANDER
    Darrell issa was one of the TARGETS of the 2001 Democratic gerrymander in Sacramento, not a beneficiary. The backroom boys removed ALL the Orange County parts of his district, and added new areas of Riverside county, where he was little known at the time.

    The gerrymander failed, since Issa was soon as popular in Riverside as he had been in the OC, winning re-election handily ever since. In 2010, for example, Issa received 63% of the vote district-wide, including 61% in Riverside.

  8. I agree with Dichiara, it was a big… yawn. This was re-hashed over and over back in the day – nothing new. Issa to his credit, has risen above the attacks of the past and has been a proven supporter of the Party as well as representing his constituents responsibly.

    Just another attempt to distract from the real issue which is a fiscal melt-down and a need for real reform. Go get ’em Issa!

  9. Another attack on the biggest gorilla in the room. The left are so afraid of the Congressman, we will probably see more Chicago style print thug writing to follow.

    Congressman Issa must come off too Presidential for the left, and the fact he is of Arab decent must also drive them to squeal.

    Thanks for reminding us that the one ond only reason to read the New Yorker is due to Malcom Gladwell. His writing is always factual and brilliant.

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    Duane: I couldn’t agree more about the article being dull overall. That’s exactly why I caled it “meandering and undisciplined.”

    Jim: I like the sound of your firm reassurance.

  11. When a reporter is coming after you, there are 2 options: (1) shut them out and use other means to respond, or (2) engage them in a very controlled manner that gets your messages into their story – the story will still suck, but it will include your straegic messaging. You do not, under any circumstance, go to lunch at Bistro Bis w/ the reporter and mouth-off about what an a-hole you are. Likewise, you don’t allow your member to speak freely about his criminal background. Bardella has done some great stuff as the PR guy for Issa and Bilbray. But his previous work had been for them as relatively obscure Reps. This is his “welcome to the bigs” moment. Let us all hope he responds well.

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