Dennis Bailey settles some scores on his blog today, criticizing the methods and results of the Critical Insights research firm, which worked with the pro-casino side on Question 2. He also faults the press for failing to question the firm's results.

Critical Insights fared poorly in my recent ranking of Maine pollsters, coming in last place of all the independent polls taken in Maine in the month before the election.

Dennis Bailey took a break from running CasinosNo! recently to offer Rep. Tom Allen some advice on his blog on how he should have handled the attendance issue.

As a former college football player, Tom should know you can’t score on defense. Here’s what he should have said:

"Yea, I missed some votes. There were times I had to care for dying parents and be with my wife who was suffering from health problems. Maybe Susan can’t but Maine people can certainly understand that. But you know what? Maine and this country would have been a lot better off if Susan Collins had missed a few votes, like her vote to give tax breaks to the very wealthy instead of Maine people; like her vote that got us into the Iraq War that has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives; like her vote to (insert outrage here). On the votes that really matter, it would have been better for all of us if Susan Collins had taken the day off."

Allen is closing the race with an attack highlighting Collins' broken term-limits pledge.

Update: The Bangor Daily News has some (fashion) advice for Bailey, who they label as the state's worst-dressed politico.

The Pro-Casino Campaign has released a new ad attacking CasinosNo! spokesman Dennis Bailey for comments he supposedly made at a "Rising Tides" (I assume they mean A Rising Tide) training seminar.

The ad claims the group has a tape of the event, although only a transcript of the exchange is available on their website and no audio is played during the ad. The ad highlights the following quote from Bailey discussing how his group won the last casino referendum as an example of him admitting to scaring voters:

"Fear always overcomes common sense, always. Casinos talk about millions of dollars a year and then we come along and say there's crime, prostitution, whatever."

I imagine in a few months, at another training seminar, Bailey will be discussing how he won this election by annoying the opposition until they focused their time and energy on him instead of winning the vote.

This ad comes on the heels of a controversy about one of the group's other recent ads.

As Las Vegas money allows the pro-casino side to take to the airwaves, CasinosNo! has responded by taking to the internet, with a youtube video highlighting some of the more unattractive parts of the referendum.

It's not a high-quality video and the soundtrack is some kind of muted reverb, but it gets the point across, and the bill itself may be bad enough that it won't take a high-powered media campaign to defeat it. Still, I hope this isn't the best the "no people" have to offer.

Dennis Bailey, executive director of CasinosNo!, has taken aim straight at pro-casino spokesperson and Green Party stalwart Pat LaMarche with a new recurring feature on the group's website "The Daily Pat Down," which will be used to respond to her public statements.

Susan Cover reports that LaMarche says bring it on, asserting that "we're more than happy to go source for source with what we've got."

Seth Carey, the ethically-challenged lawyer, is no longer head of the Oxford County casino referendum effort. He's been bought out by a Vegas firm that will likely dump a ton of money into the election. Pat LaMarche is back on as spokesperson for the effort.

The referendum itself remains as pernicious as ever. Its wording would give the casino company a monopoly over gambling in the state and the group's president a seat on several state boards overseeing everything from health care efforts to education. I hope Dennis Bailey and CasinosNo! are ready for their two-front fight.

Maine public relations specialist Dennis Bailey gives an interesting assessment of the McCain campaign's VP roll-out.

I wonder what he would think of Charlie Summer's PR wisdom in choosing to list Richard Nixon as one of his favorite politicians.