Rep.-elect Allen West (R-FL) has had a change of plans — he is not hiring as his chief of staff local talk radio host Joyce Kaufman. Kaufman recently called outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “garbage” and earlier this year called for violent revolution if the Republicans didn’t win the midterm elections.
As The Hill reports:
“It is with deep regret that this congressional office and the people of CD 22 will not have Joyce Kaufman as my chief of staff,” West said in a statement. “Joyce is a good friend, and will remain loyal to South Floridians and to me. I will always seek Joyce’s counsel for being a good representative of this congressional district.”
And Kaufman has now declared: “I will not be used in an electronic lynching by proxy… you guys can do all the things you want to me, but I will not participate in you trying to destroy him.”
Does this mean she’ll be headed up to those remote hills of Kentucky, like she earlier promised — and “gather together men and women who understand that some things are worth fighting for — and some things are worth dying for”?
We’re guessing she’ll probably just stay in Florida and on the air.
Late Update: Something else was very odd about Kaufman’s brief hiring. As the station had initially announced, she wasn’t exactly quitting her employment with them — they intended for her to remain as their Washington correspondent:
WFTL is proud of their midday drive talk host as she goes into the belly of the beast to report to us live from DC! While Joyce has accepted a position on the staff of Congressman-Elect Allen West, CD 22′, she has been retained as our Washington correspondent, with details on her new exciting schedule to be announced soon…keep listening for details!
Such an arrangement could potentially have run into problems, given ethics rules about outside sources of income on Capitol Hill.
