Dick Leggitt, campaign manager for GOP gubernatorial candidate Marc Holtzman, said he was merely playing political games – spin, he called it – when he fabricated poll numbers and fed them to a Denver Post reporter.
Leggitt, figuring the reporter would share his lies with the campaign staff of rival candidate Rep. Bob Beauprez, said he was just trying to send a message to the congressman, presumably that Holtzman was a growing force.
But by lying to a reporter, Leggitt also lied to the public. It’s a bush-league move that not only diminishes Leggitt’s credibility but also further erodes the public’s trust in elected leaders and candidates for public office.
Beauprez’s campaign, panting at the chance to make a mountain out of the episode, contends that Leggitt’s fabrications are prohibited by a Colorado law that says no one may “knowingly make … any false statement designed to affect the vote … relating to any candidate for election to public office.”
If all campaigns were held to that standard, there wouldn’t be any managers left to run campaigns – they’d all be in jail. We say that by way of exaggeration, of course, but Leggitt, a veteran of the spin wars, should know better.
Insider polls are a constant area of abuse in politics. We understand it’s one game political operatives play, but it does nothing to help the process or discourse.
Holtzman on Monday said he couldn’t comment on the matter, but did say that “some of the allegations raised were serious and I’m looking into them. If they prove to be true, that’s not acceptable to me as the leader and person responsible for this campaign.”
It came out in court last week that Leggitt fabricated poll numbers that purportedly showed Holtzman’s name recognition going from “10 percent to 70 percent and his favorables among GOP primary voters are now just slightly less than Beauprez’s.” He made the comments to show that Holtzman’s crusade against Referendums C and D last fall paid off. (The hearing was on a complaint that Holtzman’s gubernatorial campaign was improperly tied to last fall’s anti-Referendum C push.)
“We didn’t have any polling results,” Leggitt said during the administrative court hearing. “It’s what we in the election business call spin.”
We’ll call it lying.
Leggitt’s not the first to “spin” the public this way, but we hope he’s the last to do it in Colorado this year. It’s just May 2. There’s a lot of campaigning still to come.
