[UPDATED] John Oxendine vs Kyle Constable, The Update

For those who have missed what has transpired today, let me give you a brief rundown.

Shortly after I posted my take on Kyle’s encounter with Jeff Breedlove last night, Erick Erickson picked it up on Peach Pundit. Over the course of the day, that post alone came to draw nearly 150 comments – a rarity, in my experience, even on PeachPundit.

But that wasn’t the only thing that happened today with this story. Around 12:30, Creative Loafing, the AJC’s direct competitor, ran the story in their Fresh Loaf blog – and called me a Republican in the process, which I corrected in the comments.

And the story continued to grow, with the Oxendine campaign issuing this statement, resulting in a second post on Peach Pundit on this issue:

Over the past several months, Gabe Winslow, our 28 year old web strategy director, has had numerous conversations with 15-year-old blogger Kyle Constable. Kyle’s call to our campaign on Wednesday was to ask how we were using the emails from the www.youcanstopobama.com. ”I had a good conversation with Kyle today, and so did our strategist, Jeff Breedlove,” said Gabe Winslow. ”He had some good suggestions and we modified our site based on his savvy advice.”

“Kyle’s feeling of being bullied saddens me,” said Breedlove. ”We certainly did not intend to hurt anyone’s feelings or have them feel like we were bossing them around. His own blog posts seem to indicate that the feeling was mutual.”

Don’t miss the significance of this y’all. For everything that I have put on this site, and everything that other blogs have ran, the most direct response that comes to mind other than from the AJC’s uncovering of the Campaign Contribution Scandal thus far has been a fundraising email where Ox accused “a blogger” (Erick Erickson, though this wasn’t mentioned in the email) of working against him. Today, a 15 year old kid from Lee County managed to top pretty much everyone else in Georgia politics in forcing the Ox campaign to issue a statement on a particular news item.

But it didn’t come without a cost. You see, Kyle is the Treasurer of the Georgia Teen Republicans, and that particular group condemned him today in this statement, which ALSO resulted in not just one, but TWO posts on Peach Pundit:

The Georgia Teen Republicans is strongly opposed to Treasurer Kyle Constable’s actions regarding his post about Commissioner John Oxendine. Kyle stepped over the line by personally attacking a respected state-wide Republican official, as well as violated his word by going public with an off the record phone call.

Actions are being taken by the Executive Board to resolve this situation from the interior. The Georgia Teen Republicans encourage free speech, but all Republican Party elected officials are held to a higher standard regarding their speech than an average citizen.

Note that this is the second version of this statement, as the first actually read “The Georgia Teen Republicans strongly condones Treasurer Kyle Constable’s actions regarding his post about Commissioner John Oxendine.”. I am told that this statement has more to do with the fact that Kyle’s story being picked up by GA Liberal than anything else, but I fully admit I could have been misled there. (This story came out sometime in the morning, but Dustin doesn’t do timestamps over there, and I don’t remember the exact time.)

Early in the day, I was contacted by Tim Echols, Ox’s new campaign manager that just took over the ropes after Ox fired Jeff Breedlove’s wife, Kathryn Ballou, at the end of June. He sent me a friend request on Facebook, which I accepted, and also asked me to call him. Initially, I was hesitant – and even said publicly that he could email me anytime he wished, but because of my own prior experience with Breedlove, I asked that he please forgive me for not wanting to speak on the phone with any member of their campaign. I finally changed my mind on that, and I’m honestly glad I did. I spoke with Echols for a good 20 minutes or so, at least, and the vast majority of it was off the record and I intend to keep it that way. But it was genuinely a pleasant conversation, and I have every intention of keeping that particular line of communication open through the rest of this campaign. I still absolutely do NOT trust Jeff Breedlove in ANY way, but right now Tim Echols seems to be a genuinely nice guy, and I am at least willing to talk to him.

So that brings you up to speed on the developments today you may have missed. Whether it changes your opinions of any this saga is up to you.

[UPDATE] I’m talking with Trey O’Callahan, the Georgia Teen Republican Chairman, on Facebook right now, and he says that “the ga liberal pick up was not the straw that broke the camels back, creative loafing bringing [Georgia Teen Republicans] into it was the final straw when i felt as though a response was needed. Looking back on the situation, I rushed into writing a response. In so , I helped blow the ordeal out of proportion.”