There’s a long video on YouTube of Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, currently a candidate for U.S. Senate, dancing at a gay pride rally in Madison in 2010. The video was first used in Chad Lee’s campaign against her, in 2010, to depict her as out of touch; it was the backdrop of an ad in which Lee, a Republican, described her as “having a ball borrowing and spending in Congress while Wisconsin families foot the bill.”
WisPolitics reports that in advance of Baldwin’s big speech tonight at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., the political director for Tommy Thompson’s campaign, Brian Nemoir, emailed a link to the video to a few contacts (how many isn’t exactly clear), appended to the comment, “Clearly, there’s no one better positioned to talk ‘heartland values’ than Tammy.” Baldwin has promised to contrast her version of Wisconsin values tonight with those of Gov. Scott Walker and vice presidential nominee (and Wisconsin congressman) Paul Ryan, both conservative Republicans.
Nemoir told the Journal Sentinel he acted alone and sent the video to only a “handful of select contacts.”
Lee’s commercial, which came to be known as the “bouncing breasts” ad, created a bit of a stir when it ran in 2010. “The deeply unfair implication is that Baldwin parties hearty in response to her constituents’ hard times,” wrote Isthmus’ Dean Robbins. At the time, the Badger Herald in Madison asked for her reaction:
