Jason Clarke

While Congressman Tom Allen has been busy chastising fellow Maine lawmakers for how they voted in a post on Maine liberal blog Turn Maine Blue, he has missed 19 votes in Congress over the course of the past week, instead choosing to pursue “political activities”.

According to Allen communications director Mark Sullivan, the Congressman missed the 19 floor votes in the U.S. House on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week because he was “engaged in political activities” that took him away from Washington. When pressed whether “political activities” means that Allen was campaigning for the U.S. Senate instead of voting, Sullivan deferred the question to Allen’s campaign staff.

Allen is challenging Senator Susan Collins for her senate seat. Collins is one of just ten senators who have not missed a vote so far during this congress.

UPDATE: Congressman Allen’s whereabouts for at least part of the week have been discovered. According to a diarist at liberal blog MyDD, Maine’s 1st district representative was in Pacific Palisades, California earlier this week at a fundraising event for his senate campaign:

A couple of evenings ago I took the plunge and blew most of this year’s donation budget to spend an evening a fundraiser for Democratic Congressman and candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in Maine currently held by Susan Collins, Tom Allen.

…

The format of the event was an hour of heavy hors d’oeuvres and drinks to allow for mingling and conversation, including the Congressman, followed by a buffet dinner with seating in the back yard of an elegant home in the Pacific Palisades.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Maine Republican Party has picked up on the story, issuing the following press release today:

The U.S. House this week reconvened to consider issues important to our nation such as Terrorism Risk Insurance and affordable housing. But Maine’s 1st Congressional district was lacking something important: representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. Tom Allen missed an additional 19 votes this week so he could spend more time campaigning, bringing his totalof missed votes to 129. .

Maine Republican Party Chairman Mark Ellis said, “We were relieved when Tom Allen returned to work today to learn that he is good health and we welcome him back. But to miss 19 consecutive votes in a row for fundraising and campaigning more than a year before the election is inexcusable. This shows that Congressman Allen cares more about being a candidate than he does about doing his job.”

Chairman Ellis concluded, “The House of Representatives has only had votes on 9 of the last 45 days. Congressman Allen missed three of those days of voting completely. Couldn’t he have scheduled his campaign events for the other 36 days? I think Mainers deserve to know the answer to the question, ‘Where was Tom.’”

Eager to capitalize on recent negative press surrounding her opponent Tom Allen’s association with far-left activist group MoveOn.org, Senator Susan Collins’ re-election team launched an early version of the campaign’s official website this week.

SusanCollins.com features videos, photo galleries, and blog. On Collins’ site, the freshly launched blog features a post written by the Senator herself regarding her questioning of Army General David Petraeus.

Senator Collins’ campaign site bears some striking differences from that of her opponent, Congressman Tom Allen. While Allen occasionally blogs at DailyKos and Maine-based blog TurnMaineBlue, his site does not have any kind of blog of its own. Another notable difference is that while Allen’s site focuses heavily on his opposition to the war in Iraq (he even devotes a top-level navigation item to the issue, despite having a separate section on his positions) with three front page items on the war, Collins site instead more heavily focuses on her connection to Maine, via a series of rotating images and news items, while just a corner of the front page is devoted to a video detailing her position on Iraq.

Beyond the clam bakes and parade walks over the next year, the online space will be a critically important battleground in this race. This week, the Collins campaign got off to a great start.

Next up in the series of Republican Presidential debate video reports Lance Dutson and I filed is an interview with Ron Paul, who is so far capturing much attention online and at events such as Wednesday’s debate, yet has not translated that enthusiasm into poll numbers. Lance talked to Congressman Paul about that, among other things:

At Wednesday night’s Republican Presidential debate, Lance Dutson and I had a chance to file some video reports from the scene, which we’ll be posting over the next few days.

First up, an interview with FoxNews chief political correspondent Carl Cameron:

While the debate wraps up, we’re getting ready to head over to the spin room to shoot some photos and video. If you have questions you’d like us to ask the candidates and/or their flacks in the spin room, text message your question to me at 207-299-8508.

My pick for Winners of the debate: John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. While neither said anything revelatory, they both sounded confident, bold, and presidential while repeating their own talking points. The biggest losers tonight, in my opinion, are Paul and Romney, who both stuck to their own tired positions but seemed to both bend in on themselves like shadows as they either ranted (Paul) or stammered (Romney) their way through. Romney may have enough energy to make it through the next eight months, but he certainly doesn’t have the dynamism. If he borrowed some of Paul’s, he could stand a chance against Thompson or Giuliani, but right now, if McCain’s organization is running on fumes, it looks like it’s the Mayor versus the actor for the long haul.

* “Not a record we should be proud of” is McCain’s comment on the massive bloat of government under Republican leadership over the past few years.

* Brownback chimes in with a snoozer answer on how taxes are too high.

* Asked about his decision to not sign a pledge that he won’t raise taxes as President, Giuliani rightly notes that as President, he’ll take “one pledge” and not respond to every single request to sign a pledge. Now, for the second time tonight, he spouting a range of statistics about his term as Mayor of New York.

* Romney, or “Fifi” as Wallace says he was called as Governor, gets a cheer with a promise to “kill the death tax”…suspiciously echoing a sign I saw outside of the debate. He then takes a shot at Edwards’ hair cut, looking far too proud of himself and earning a half-hearted laugh from the crowd.

* With just about 10 minutes left, Huckabee is falling somewhat flat with his push for a “fair tax”. Is that like a flat tax with a new, hip name?

* Uh oh, here we go with Paul’s answer. He’s clapping as Wallace rails off a list of things he wants to eliminate, including the CIA. Paul is a walking compendium of crowd-friendly sound bites, but what he’s saying is little more than bumper-sticker level analysis.

…and the next issue is security. Talk about a hedge: Romney says the surge is “apparently” working.

UPDATE: Wow…McCain takes a direct shot at Romney, repeating “the surge is working”, and “it’s not whether it’s apparently working or not…it’s whether we will set a date for withdrawl, which means surrender.” More: “I want our troops home with honor”, and with that McCain gets the biggest applause of the night from the debate audience.

UPDATE: Just one question later, Paul elicits a large cheer for his typically charged answer that we should withdraw from Iraq. Paul and Chris Wallace then get into it after Paul’s response that we should withdraw from Iraq. Wallace is clearly irked, asking Paul if “we should take our marching orders from Al Qaeda?”

UPDATE: Finally, Wendell brings Duncan Hunter into the conversation monopolized by Paul. But where’s Tancredo? Is he still on stage?

UPDATE:Wallace finally brings Tacredo into the mix, and he makes a great point in response to Paul’s earlier comment that we were attacked in part because of our bases in Saudi Arabia.

UPDATE: Now back to Cameron at Young’s Restaraunt, and a question for Governor Romney: “How can we bring an endgame to Iraq and make sure it’s still a victory for us?” In response, Romney stammers when backtracking on his earlier comments that his son serves his country by campaigning on his behalf, then echoes Tancredo’s comments about the war being with radical Islam, not with Iraq exclusively.

More from Young’s Restaurant: A woman from Durham states that there should not be an amendment banning gay marriage. Brownback disagrees, eliciting more cheers but some boos from the debate hall. And now we’re off to the first commercial break.

Romney: 2 answers
Giuliani: 2 answers
McCain: 2 answers
Brownback: 2 answers
Hunter: 2 answers
Tancredo, Huckabee, Paul: 1 answer

The public: 2 questions out of about 7

FoxNews’ Carl Cameron is live at a local restaurant here in Durham. The first question- we’re still on the topic of amnesty 20 minutes in- is from a man who is complaining that a fence is not enough to keep illegal immigrants out.

Giuliani answers by stating that we need a “tamper-proof” ID card for all immigrants. McCain says that the dictionary defines amnesty as “forgiveness”, while the amnesty bill was anything but. Now, Romney has jumped in, saying that we should put an end to sanctuary cities “like New York”.

And that does it for amnesty. Next up: “family values”.