Out of the Closet – Scott Powers Speaks!

This afternoon, I spoke with Scott Powers, the Orlando Sentinel reporter who was made to wait inside a storage closet by Vice President Joe Biden’s staff at a fundraiser on March 23 in Orlando for U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL).

Rumors of his kidnapping, he says, have been greatly exaggerated.

“When I got there,” Powers says, “I was told that I was to wait in the ‘holding room’ until the Vice President got there.

“They led me to the ‘holding room.’ It turned out to be a storage closet. I was led to believe I would be in there for fifteen to twenty minutes.

“Either I was misunderstanding, or he was way late, because I was in there for over an hour.”

The door inside the posh suburban home was not locked–contrary to some reports–and Powers, the pool reporter assigned to the event, emerged several times to ask Biden’s advance team what was going on.

“I wasn’t in there without my consent–my options were to wait there or leave the house,” Powers notes.

Yet he was still “a little annoyed” by what happened.

“I’ve never been stuck in a room like that before,” he says. “I’ve been at these quasi-political events where they’ve cordoned off reporters. I think the mess-up here was that rather than find a comfortable place to put me, they put me in a storage closet.”

Biden’s staffers provided a chair and small table for Powers in the 8 ft. by 10 ft. closet, which was lined with boxes and baskets.

He was allowed to emerge towards the end of the Vice President’s remarks, then ushered back in until Biden’s motorcade left.

Despite poor cell phone reception, Powers was able to use his BlackBerry to send photographs of the closet back to his editors, who posted them on the newspaper’s website, and published an article about the incident in the next day’s print edition.

“My editors felt a little dismay, and a little amusement–maybe more the amusement,” he says.

Powers insists there was no cover-up of the incident, even though he did not write about it in his article on the fundraiser.

He adds that the homeowner and host, property developer Alan Ginsburg, was upset when he discovered what had happened, and phoned to apologize.

“He said he didn’t even know I was in the house, let alone that [Biden’s staff] had put me in his storage closet, and wanted me to know it wasn’t his doing.”

Powers also received an apology via e-mail from the Vice President’s office, which he found a bit disappointing, until he received a phone call from Biden’s press staff.

“The Vice President’s office has advised me that a low-level staffer they wouldn’t name had made the mistake, and that it wouldn’t happen again.”

A junior staffer from Sen. Nelson’s staff was also involved, Powers says, though Nelson has not yet apologized.

Power says that other reporters and bloggers have been “stretching and creating some of the details” of his story. Still, he hopes the publicity will have an impact.

“There’s no reason why they can’t let reporters mix with guests” at fundraisers, Powers says.

“These were well-to-do people that could afford to give a sizable contribution to a political candidate. They are aware of what’s going on.

“That policy needs to be seriously reviewed, if not abolished.”