EATING CROW
Well we find ourselves at Oakland Confidential having to issue a retraction (and apology) to the chair of the Oakland County Republican Party after an initial item was released for our December edition of the gossip column. The website for the county Republicans carried a section with a list of party endorsements of candidates in many county races for the November election – partisan and non-partisan contests. Then a missive from GOP county chair Rocky Raczkowski made its way into followers’ email boxes the day ahead of the Birmingham election and basically provided the endorsements labeled “Oakland Republican Party Municipal Recommendations.” The party email listed four candidates of seven candidates and told readers to vote for “no more than three.” One former Birmingham city commissioner reports that he reached out to Rocky to find out why the party was getting involved in a non-partisan race and was told that the Democratic party had endorsed (three other candidates in the race), so the GOP at the county level thought it should do the same. Oakland Confidential reached out to the local Democratic club and an officer responded that neither the local club, nor the county Democratic party, had issued endorsements. In fact, the website for the county Democratic party also carries a disclaimer saying that “OCDP rules do not authorize local endorsements.” But after our release of this gossip item we were made aware of a blog for the local Democratic club that clearly endorsed three candidates on October 22, contradicting what a local Dem club official told us. Look for a follow-up in the future after we pursue the question of why someone gave us bad information or lied to us, when we are done licking our wounds for failing big time on this one.