"There's a certain style of writing," says DeJuliis, who kept the letter. "There's not a solitary shred of doubt that Joe Steffen wrote this."
Nor a shred of proof.
Joe Steffen, right, with Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, before Steffen got fired because of his postings on the Free Republic Web site.
(WMAR-TV2 via AP)
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Says Ehrlich: "Connie DeJuliis is a very bitter, defeated candidate."
Yet another story: In 1998, Democratic state Sen. Michael Collins was challenged for his suburban Baltimore seat by Del. Kenneth Holt, an Ehrlich ally. Collins attended civic meetings and endorsement dinners, where he noticed the same two and sometimes three young men sitting together and taking notes. He thought it strange that he didn't know them because, as someone who had been in the General Assembly for 20 years, he usually knew everyone at these meetings.
He later learned they were Steffen, Richard Cross and Craig Chesek. Today Cross, a friend of Steffen's, is a speechwriter for Ehrlich. Chesek has served in a couple of state agencies, where co-workers have claimed he, like Steffen, was assigned to root out Democrats. Steffen wrote an e-mail last year saying at one agency Chesek could help in "cleaning house." Chesek has denied that was his role.
Collins began receiving anonymous letters that he said falsely implied he was gay and made sexually suggestive observations about men who had attended those same meetings where he saw the three operatives. Since he knew everyone else at the meetings, Collins suspects the half-dozen letters must be from Steffen or the other two.
But he has no proof.
"The only thing I could think of at the time was it was to knock me off my stride," says Collins, who was reelected.
Holt did not respond to telephone messages. Cross says he advised Holt on media strategy and Steffen and Chesek attended meetings to keep track of Collins's positions. He denies the campaign was responsible for the letters.
"My take at the time was, this was somebody trying to frame the Holt campaign," Cross says. "A Democrat who didn't like Collins was trying to frame the Holt campaign."
More vapors.
Spreading Rumors
If Steffen has been the subject of unproved aspersions floated by political foes, he wouldn't be the only one in this drama. The stories about Steffen have their twisted analogue in the gossip about O'Malley.
There is no evidence that Steffen started the widespread rumors about the mayor or was part of a campaign to spread them. But in August, NCPAC wrote that he had a glossy photo of a television anchorwoman whom rumors linked to O'Malley. "Am thinking of taking it to one of [O'Malley's] concerts and asking him to autograph it for me," NCPAC wrote.
NCPAC also wrote a post with an idea for Illinois GOP Senate candidate Jack Ryan to deflect attention from a growing scandal: Operatives masquerading as supporters of Democrat Barack Obama could deface GOP signs and hand out bogus inflammatory attack fliers to make the Democrats look bad.
Last fall, NCPAC was drawn into a private chat by someone raising the O'Malley rumors under the name MD4BUSH. This is when NCPAC spoke of people working to give the rumors "float."
After NCPAC was revealed to be Steffen, he sounded contrite: "I am writing today to apologize to you, your wife, and your children for my thoughtless and indefensible promulgation of rumors concerning your family life," Steffen wrote in an e-mail to O'Malley, according to the Baltimore Sun.
But the question lingers: What did the Prince of Darkness mean when he wrote, "part of my unwritten job description is to hurt people," and "I can't even discuss a lot of what I've done?"
It's the kind of thing his enemies allege about him.
'Oh, That's Joe'
Steffen's friends say the media have seized on an image of a tough-guy operative that is an incomplete portrait of the Joe they know.
True, the friends acknowledge, Steffen himself cultivated that image. And they don't condone his comments on the O'Malley gossip.
