The Denver Three, as they call themselves, are taking their grievance on the road. They’re trying to stay in the spotlight, but their story is losing momentum, and they may be losing the mostly positive response they got after their expulsion from a Bush administration “town hall meeting” two months ago.
On May 21, the Three launched their “Don’t Privatize My Freedom” campaign, but it got only modest media attention.
“The story’s not progressing,” said Alex Young, one-third of the Three. “We really do need to have some development for it to be a case for the media to have interest in. And this is a really big deal. All over the country you have people being kicked out.”
Virtually everyone – including eight of the nine members of Colorado’s congressional delegation – said it was wrong for someone in the presidential posse to eject these three people, who showed up at a March 21 event meant to promote the president’s plans for Social Security. (Rep. Joel Hefley hasn’t commented on the issue.)
The event was paid for with taxpayer dollars, and it was open to the public. Attendees had to have tickets, but Young, Karen Bauer and Leslie Weise went to the trouble to get them. Yet they still were stopped at the door by a fellow in a suit and earpiece who looked like a Secret Service agent.
He said he was suspicious about their intent because the bumper sticker on their car read “No War for Oil.” The car was a decade-old Saab. They might have blended in better if they’d pulled up in a newer SUV.
They also wore T-shirts under their more conservative clothes that read “No more lies.” But they had decided not to unveil them.
To this day, Mr. Suit and Earpiece hasn’t been identified publicly, although the Secret Service and White House say they know who he is.
A reasonable person might suspect he was an overzealous local whose loyalty overwhelmed his common sense and the lessons he should have learned in junior-high civics. But maybe he wasn’t.
That makes a difference, Young says. It’s one thing if he’s just a local goon, quite another if he’s a White House staffer.
“It’s a frustrating thing for the three of us,” said Young. “We really need the guy’s name before we can proceed. We don’t have the first idea of who to go after.”
This story is at the point where the news media will be criticized no matter what happens next. If the supposedly impartial press keeps picking at it, are reporters siding with Bush opponents? If the media back off, are they letting somebody get away with something? And when does pressing a good cause deteriorate into something more like nagging?
A spokeswoman for the state GOP, Rachael Sunbarger, said the Three have hurt their credibility “by exploiting this situation for their personal and political gain. I think their motives are transparent and their actions further cement their image as liberal activists who are just looking to get attention.”
Yet this is the sort of thing left-wing critics have in mind when they say the press isn’t hounding the president sufficiently. “The American media could learn a thing or two from the Denver 3, about how to pursue a story the White House wants to bury,” said a website called buzzflash.com.
Young agrees. “We totally think the media should be asking the White House those questions,” he said. “Who was it who removed us? Who trained him? Who directed his actions? And is this a White House policy to remove people from public events based on their political opinions? … There are more important stories, of course. But I think we’re dedicated to seeing this through.”
They’re planning their own town hall meetings on Social Security, starting in Denver. They’ve got a slogan, a logo – symbolically red, blue and a sort of grayish blue – and a website, DenverThree.org.
And they’re selling bumper stickers and T-shirts – although, as Young points out, you might not want to be sporting them when you show up at a presidential event, “unless you want to push the envelope a little bit.”
Fred Brown, retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a former national president of the Society of Professional Journalists.
