GOP’s Tim Griffin: A case study when an internet story takes on life of its own

In his 2007 DOJ letter, he wrote, “Much of this voter registration fraud was driven by a desire for financial gain by unscrupulous individuals who were hired by third party groups such as Americans Coming Together (ACT) and Move On to seek out and register new voters and were paid for each successful registration.”

In turn, the RNC, says Griffin in his letter, set out to find voter fraud. A number of Republican state parties mailed thousands of letters to newly registered voters. Its intent? To highlight thousands of fraudulent voter registrations. It had been reported that even Mary Poppins had been registered to vote in Ohio.

Griffin wrote in his 2007 DOJ letter that the “caging” lists were “simply lists of returned letters mailed by the state parties.”

Part of the complex situation that Palast chronicled involved a wrong e-mail address in Florida. There, an enterprising Democratic prankster owned the e-mail address: @georgewbush.org – essentially a dead letter office. Some emails from Republican campaign workers were sent to that address instead of the correct @georgewbush.com. As a result, the owner of the “org” address captured hundreds, perhaps thousands, of emails – one with an attached spread sheet with the name “caging.xls.”

The file name originated from Florida. In the letter, Griffin asserts that he did not know what the definition of “caging” was.

Griffin will be a force for any opponent.

He has served in Iraq, been in the Army for 13 years, worked as a federal prosecutor, worked as a counsel on Capitol Hill and is a member of Arkansas and Louisiana bars.

Last week, the Washington Post’s The Fix blog ranked Griffin’s race number nine to watch out of 20 races. It had held at the number 10 position. Chris Cillizza wrote: “Griffin starts with a financial edge over any Democrat and will benefit from the fact that Obama lost the district by 10 points in 2008.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee announced last week that Griffin has reached “Young Gun” Status, the top level of its three-level Young Guns program. A NRCC press release said, “By advancing to the program’s top tier, Griffin has proven his ability to build a winning campaign and achieve substantial fundraising goals.”