While the two frontrunners for U.S. Senate are otherwise occupied this Memorial Day weekend, Republican Peter Schiff is working the parade circuit. He plans to attend several holiday events across the state over the next couple of days, along with a fundraiser in Salisbury, said his spokeswoman Jennifer Millikin.
Everywhere he goes, he's trailed by a team of folks out collecting the signatures he needs to secure a spot on the GOP primary ballot. The campaign has hired a company to help it obtain more than 8,000 signatures from registered Republicans, Millikin said.
The campaign is also paying volunteers a bounty for each signature collected -- the rumored price is $2.25 per GOP John Hancock, but Millikin was unable to confirm that number on Saturday. There's apparently nothing illegal about that, but it is a curious approach given the criticism the Schiff campaign voiced when the Stamford Advocate's Brian Lockhart uncovered a similar-pay-to-play maneuver by Schiff's multi-millionaire Republican rival, Linda McMahon. [McMahon was offering to pay college students $5 for every Republican voter they register; Schiff campaign manager JR Romano compared the practice to ACORN and McMahon soon backtracked.]
Millikin said the Schiff campaign hired a paid group to organize the petition drive because the signatures it collects could face legal challenges from McMahon's "bastions of attorneys."
The campaign needs at least 8,268 but it wants to get "at least double that'' to guard against challenges, Millikin said. "She clearly doesn't want him on the ballot,'' she added, referring to McMahon.