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Dec
20
Michael Connell was killed when the Piper Supercub he was piloting crashed three miles short of an Akron-Canton Airport runway. He leaves behind a wife and four children.
Connell, 45, of Bath Township, is considered to be one of the Republican Party’s top computer experts. He led the companies that designed websites for the GOP and a virtual who’s-who list of republican political leaders including President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain, as well as national organizations. Connell developed a host of federal government software and data management systems. Connell is also said to be a close confidant of the Bush family.
Earlier this year Connell was subpoenaed to testify in an Ohio federal court regarding voter fraud just days before the November presidential election. His alleged intimate knowledge of White House and Capitol Hill email systems has been a hot topic of conversation for Washington insiders regarding the Karl Rove/White House email scandal.
Ohio.com has details of the crash and scene.
Connell was perhaps best known recently for his creation and success with New Media Communications. From WKYC:
Connell founded New Media Communications, based in Cleveland, is the CEO of GovTech Solutions, based in Akron, and is associated with several other successful IT, marketing and advertising enterprises. His companies have won numerous awards for the development of political websites, marketing campaigns, and use of technology. New Media Communications placed third on the prestigious Weatherhead 100, a list compiled by Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management that recognizes Northeast Ohio’s fastest growing companies.
As of this morning, Mr. Connell’s bio was still posted at the company’s website, so you can read more about him here.
He had a wife and four children. My heart goes out to them.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:08 pm December 20th, 2008 in Ohio, Politics, Republicans, RIP, Tech
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7 Responses to “RIP, Michael Connell, Internet-savvy political consultant for GOP”
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Shalom Jill,
Larisa Alexandrovna writes:
And The Wall Street Journal:
It’s going to be a strange week.
B’shalom,
Jeff
[...] 0954: RIP, Michael Connell, Internet-savvy political consultant for GOP [...]
Thanks, Jeff. The circumstances sure couldn’t be too much more of an eyebrow raiser but it looks like it will be a long time before any certainty will be coming out about what happened precisely. It will be interesting to see how the companies progress – so often, work like what Connell did boils down to the person him or herself – it really can’t be done by anyone else. Hopefully the wife and children have savings etc. It just sounds like the work the companies did relied enormously on his skills. Very very sad.
Shalom Jill,
In the good ol’ days this would have been a story the Democratic paper(s) in Cleveland would have been all over.
(Yes, kiddies, there was a time when newspapers proudly heralded their political affiliation before the wimpy concept of journalistic objectivity became de rigueur.)
But today we no longer have a Democratic paper. We don’t even have papers. We just have the Pee Dee which is incapable of reporting on anything other than sports with with any enthusiasm.
Yes, it is good to stop for a moment and consider the human tragedy here: Connell’s family and employees. But we mustn’t allow that to cloud the larger story of what this man represented and did and to consider how to keep Democracy from being subverted in the future.
B’shalom,
Jeff
[...] 0859: RIP, Michael Connell, Internet-savvy political consultant for GOP [...]
The larger story for his kids is that they lost their dad. Merry Christmas!
Shalom Rich,
Yes, the children, wife and extended family have been dealt a horrible blow.
But for the rest of us the bigger story is the life the Connell lived and how that life changed our lives.
I’m reminded of the comment by a New York Times obituary writer who was part of the team assigned to write glowing obituaries of all those who died in the New York piece of the 11 September attacks who said, “what do we do when the person was a real bastard?”
Even the most evil person on Earth has a mother and a father.
B’shalom,
Jeff