A gay journalist's "germ warfare" prank against Gary Bauer's Republican presidential campaign before the Iowa caucuses may end up bugging him in the end - it could cost him five years of freedom and over $7,000 in fines if he's convicted of voter fraud over his Iowa voter registration.
The Bauer campaign is considering filing charges against syndicated columnist Dan Savage, who wrote of the prank in Salon on Jan. 25. Bauer's Iowa campaign director, Loras Schulte, tells the New York Post he's planning to file a criminal voter-fraud complaint against Savage, who admitted in his column he tried spreading his flu by licking doorknobs, coffee cups, and even a ballpoint pen he was able to hand Bauer for an autograph.
Schulte also tells the paper the campaign is mulling whether to file a civil suit against Salon, an online opinion journal.
"I don't want to be vindictive or un-Christian, but Christians aren't supposed to be doormats," he tells Post columnist Rod Dreher. "Somebody has to take a stand against this sort of thing."
The Post says Savage's voter registration form, on which he certifies he's an Iowa resident, includes the Des Moines hotel in which he stayed for a week while working on a campaign story - a project which led to his prank against Bauer's campaign, following his dismay over anti-gay statements he'd heard Bauer make on television.
Savage was actually a Seattle resident, and if he cannot prove he signed that form truthfully, intending to make Iowa his permanent home, he could face five years behind bars and up to $7,500 in fines.
Savage could also face an assault charge and possibly a hate-crime charge under Iowa law, if any action against him proves he attacked the Bauer campaign because of their political or religious affiliations, Schulte tells the Post.
Savage's "smirky admission in print that he wanted to infect Bauer and his followers with the flu to get back at them for being members of the 'religious right' looks pretty damning now," Dreher writes. "That's not journalism, boys, that's evidence."
