Joe the Plumber, Call Your Agent
By Pat Wingert and Mark Hosenball
Joe the Plumber, whose on-the-street questioning of Barack Obama’s tax cuts made him a cult hero in conservative circles and the star of the third presidential debate, has decided to take full advantage of his fifteen minutes of fame, staffers working for John McCain discovered this week. The campaign extended a special invitation to Joe, whose real name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, to attend John McCain’s campaign rally in Wurzelbacher’s hometown of Toledo on Sunday afternoon, but were told that Joe had other plans. It turns out that Wurzelbacher, his teenage son and his father decided to accept an invitation from Fox TV to fly to New York City so Joe could tape a sit-down interview with former Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee, host of a new Saturday evening talk show, as well as Sunday and Monday segments for the networks’ early morning Fox and Friends show. Asked about the snub, the McCain campaign said Wurzelbacher told them he would be “out of town.” Calls to Wurzelbacher were not returned.
Wurzelbacher became a media star after a chance encounter with Obama Oct. 12 during an impromptu campaign stop the Democratic presidential nominee made in the plumber’s middle class suburban neighborhood. As Obama worked the crowd with a pool camera rolling, the 34-year-old Wurzelbacher engaged the candidate to ask whether his taxes would go up, if the plumbing business he hoped to buy generated income of more than $250,000. When Obama answered that his plan called for tax cuts for the more than 90 percent of Americans who make less than that figure, and that he thought it better to “spread the wealth around,” the McCain campaign and conservative pundits zeroed right in on that turn of phrase.
During the final presidential debate Wednesday night, McCain took up Wurzelbacher’s case, arguing to Obama that Joe “wanted to buy the business, but he looked at your tax plan and he saw that he was going to pay much higher taxes” just as he was reaching what McCain called “the American Dream.” During the rest of the debate, “Joe the Plumber” was mentioned more than two dozen times as the candidates argued over whose programs would better help the middle class.
McCain praised Wurzelbacher as the “real winner” of the debate, but the Toledo man might not be so quick to agree. Reporters working on profiles soon discovered that Wurzelbacher didn’t actually have a state or local license to work as a plumber in the Toledo area, and despite Wurzelbacher’s insistence that he didn’t need one, local officials and building inspectors in Toledo insisted he did. On Friday, those officials said a letter was being mailed to Wurzelbacher’s employer warning him to get into compliance with city codes or face the loss of the company’s license. The twice-divorced single father also admitted in interviews that his present income was “not even close” to the $250,000 he was asking Obama about (Wurzelbacher was making $40,000 a year in 2006, divorce papers indicate), and doesn’t have an immediate plan or the means to buy the plumbing business he currently works for, although he hoped to some day. A quick review of public records also revealed that the man who expressed worry about future taxes owed back taxes to the state of Ohio and had his wages garnished recently for not paying a hospital bill.
Wurzelbacher also discovered how easy it is to make a verbal misstep. While taping an interview with CBS Evening News with anchor Katie Couric on Thursday, Wurzelbacher said he decided to question Obama about his tax plan because he wanted to get a straight answer from the candidate, but that the candidate’s “tap dance” was “almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr.”, which many commentators on the left took as evidence of, at the least, poor taste.
—With Mary Chapman in Toledo
Joe the Plumber, whose on-the-street questioning of Barack Obama’s tax cuts made him a cult hero in conservative circles and the star of the third presidential debate, has decided to take full advantage of his fifteen minutes of fame, staffers working for John McCain discovered this week. The campaign extended a special invitation to Joe, whose real name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, to attend John McCain’s campaign rally in Wurzelbacher’s hometown of Toledo on Sunday afternoon, but were told that Joe had other plans. It turns out that Wurzelbacher, his teenage son and his father decided to accept an invitation from Fox TV to fly to New York City so Joe could tape a sit-down interview with former Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee, host of a new Saturday evening talk show, as well as Sunday and Monday segments for the networks’ early morning Fox and Friends show. Asked about the snub, the McCain campaign said Wurzelbacher told them he would be “out of town.” Calls to Wurzelbacher were not returned.
Wurzelbacher became a media star after a chance encounter with Obama Oct. 12 during an impromptu campaign stop the Democratic presidential nominee made in the plumber’s middle class suburban neighborhood. As Obama worked the crowd with a pool camera rolling, the 34-year-old Wurzelbacher engaged the candidate to ask whether his taxes would go up, if the plumbing business he hoped to buy generated income of more than $250,000. When Obama answered that his plan called for tax cuts for the more than 90 percent of Americans who make less than that figure, and that he thought it better to “spread the wealth around,” the McCain campaign and conservative pundits zeroed right in on that turn of phrase.
During the final presidential debate Wednesday night, McCain took up Wurzelbacher’s case, arguing to Obama that Joe “wanted to buy the business, but he looked at your tax plan and he saw that he was going to pay much higher taxes” just as he was reaching what McCain called “the American Dream.” During the rest of the debate, “Joe the Plumber” was mentioned more than two dozen times as the candidates argued over whose programs would better help the middle class.
McCain praised Wurzelbacher as the “real winner” of the debate, but the Toledo man might not be so quick to agree. Reporters working on profiles soon discovered that Wurzelbacher didn’t actually have a state or local license to work as a plumber in the Toledo area, and despite Wurzelbacher’s insistence that he didn’t need one, local officials and building inspectors in Toledo insisted he did. On Friday, those officials said a letter was being mailed to Wurzelbacher’s employer warning him to get into compliance with city codes or face the loss of the company’s license. The twice-divorced single father also admitted in interviews that his present income was “not even close” to the $250,000 he was asking Obama about (Wurzelbacher was making $40,000 a year in 2006, divorce papers indicate), and doesn’t have an immediate plan or the means to buy the plumbing business he currently works for, although he hoped to some day. A quick review of public records also revealed that the man who expressed worry about future taxes owed back taxes to the state of Ohio and had his wages garnished recently for not paying a hospital bill.
Wurzelbacher also discovered how easy it is to make a verbal misstep. While taping an interview with CBS Evening News with anchor Katie Couric on Thursday, Wurzelbacher said he decided to question Obama about his tax plan because he wanted to get a straight answer from the candidate, but that the candidate’s “tap dance” was “almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr.”, which many commentators on the left took as evidence of, at the least, poor taste.
—With Mary Chapman in Toledo
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