Karl Rove's "IT Guru" and the 2004 Ohio Rumor Mill (2008)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2022

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

*** The Radiotopia fundraiser is happening right now! Support this show by becoming a member today: https://on.prx.org/3Ehr3B6 ***

It’s December 22nd. In 2008, Dan Connell, a technology consultant, died in a small plane crash in Ohio. Connell had been a longtime consultant for GOP campaigns, and his death set off all sorts of rumors and conspiracies reaching back to questions about the 2004 presidential election in Ohio. Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss the ecosystem of left-wing conspiracies, wrapped around kernels of truths, that have lived online since the early 2000s.

This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories.

If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on our website: ThisDayPod.com

Get in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Our website is thisdaypod.com Follow us on social @thisdaypod

Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:06.6	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:08.6	This day, December 2008, technology consultant Mike Connell died in a plane crash when his Piper
0:18.4	Super Cub he was flying crashed three miles short of the runway at Ohio's Akron-Canton Airport.
0:25.3	It's a tragic accident, a small plane crash, but this incident set off all sorts of rumors,
0:30.5	at least within certain particular circles, especially on the internet.
0:35.2	Because Mike Connell had a firm that created websites and did other work for George W Bush and
0:40.1	John McCain, among other leading Republicans, and had done technology work for the GOP heading back into the early 2000s.
0:48.1	And specifically, he had worked on voting systems in Ohio in 2004, where there were all sorts of theories and rumors about
0:56.9	shady voting tabulation.
0:59.4	There were also rumors in 2008 that Connell was set to testify about some of his vote tabulation work just
1:05.2	before he died.
1:06.2	There were even rumors that he'd been particularly cautious about the small planes that
1:10.4	he flew in the months before his death, there were lots of rumors.
1:14.9	So here to talk about the story of Mike McConnell, but really in a larger sense to talk about
1:20.6	some conspiracy theories and also real questions about the 2004 election and a bit of a survey
1:26.4	of conspiracy theories from the left, conspiracy theories from the right, and how that has evolved
1:30.9	over the last decade and a half or so since this story
1:34.6	here to do all that in you know not that long of an episode are Nicole
1:39.2	Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.
1:42.8	Hello Jody.
1:43.8	Hey there.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -831 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.