You'd better watch what you say, even to your backers. It just may backfire on you!

It seems as though 12th District Republican incumbant Congressman Adam Putnam sent a fundraising letter to his moneyed friends recently. It said that the ghost of Howard Dean was coming after him! Actually, the letter referred to his main Democratic rival, Lakeland software salesman Jeffrey Siemer...who had been active supporting Dean's presidential bid and has said that the former Vermont governor's campaign was a catalyst for his own decision to seek the congressional seat. Putnam was asking supporters to pony up even more money for the campaign, even though he has approximately 95 times Siemer's backroll!

The story was picked up by the St. Petersburg Times, which ran it in it's "Political Junkie" column last Thursday. From there it was one of the featured items on the blog for Dean's organization, Democracy For America, over the weekend. Since then, his campaign manager has noted that Siemer has received several hundred dollars in donations from across the country, and even from an expatriot living in Japan! Before now, Siemer had been just another local congressional candidate facing uphill odds against a heavily favoured incumbant. Hey, maybe Putnam --- known as "Red" by President Bush --- should send out more of these letters!