Andrew Romanoff’s campaign manager, Bill Romjue, made among the worst mistakes you can make in politics.
He told the truth.
You can only guess what followed. To quote Bill Murray (note to Scott McInnis, this is how you do it): Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.
In other words, it was just another day in the weird, weird world of Colorado politics.
You have to struggle in this world to make headlines. One day Michael Bennet has to reach into his jeans pockets to pull out $300,000 for a loan to his campaign, which has already spent $5.8 million while managing to still blow a huge lead in the polls. It must have been that Washington County/Washington, D.C., ad.
That’s a pretty good story, a match for the Andrew Romanoff-sells-his- house-to-make-attack-ads story. But neither story is nearly as good as this one:
Dan Maes, who is now the actual front-runner in the race to be the Republican gubernatorial nominee, says Denver’s ride-a-bike program and other green promotions are — and I quote — “converting Denver into a United Nations community.”
No, this is not an Onion article. This is on the front page of your Denver Post.
Once, it was all about black U.N. helicopters. Now, we’ve apparently moved to brightly colored bicycles, which are dangerously for rent right in front of my own office building to be used by possible U.N. dupes/Denver citizens/anyone else. Who knows what mode of transportation is next? To quote would-be Gov. Maes: “This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms.”
I’m thinking that more than personal freedoms are at stake here. But here’s the really strange thing. Even Maes’ go-for-the-tinfoil conspiracy theory is not the biggest political story of the day. Michael Bennet hosting Barack Obama on his town-hall- by-telephone is not the biggest story of the day either.
None of it compares with Romjue’s concession to Politico that Roma noff’s holier-than-thou stance on PAC money was, let’s say, not as holy as you’d think.
You see, Romanoff’s entire campaign has been based on the notion that Bennet has been corrupted by PAC money. There’s the twin notion that Romanoff, though he took PAC money himself as the state House speaker, has forsworn its influence and now sees a new and brighter way to conduct politics.
Of course, the problem for Roma noff is that while the whole idea may sound good in a come-from-behind primary, it may not allow you to compete in a general election.
And so when the news site Politico asked Romjue whether Romanoff would take money from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, he answered:
“You can always find an ivory-tower person that’s completely pure. We’re not an ivory-tower person. Andrew’s going to be funded by individuals, but of course we’ll accept money from the DSCC.”
There went purity as a selling point. But there’s more. Romjue added that it was OK because the DSCC doesn’t take much PAC money, except, of course, that it does. It takes a greater percentage of PAC money than — wait for it — Michael Bennet.
It takes money from banks and lobbyists and tobacco companies.
In other words, oops.
Romanoff, you’ll remember, was on a roll. Romanoff had caught Bennet in the polls. And Romanoff hit with his Bennet-is-a-looter TV ad, leaving Romanoff as the pure guy in the race, for the rest of us.
So now we ask how pure is the pure guy? Well, not 99 and 4 4/100 percent Ivory pure, anyway.
Romanoff’s campaign had wisely avoided answering the DSCC question because there was no good answer. You can’t really say no because everyone knows that eventually Romanoff would have to say yes.
Romjue must have missed the memo. Here’s how seriously Roma noff is taking this issue. He sent a letter to supporters, listing his home phone number and saying people should call him to discuss it.
Yes. He actually includes his soon- to-be-former-home phone number — you’d better call quickly — in the letter. In case you don’t call (and I’m waiting for Bennet to now tell his supporters they can drop by the house), Romanoff says he’ll take DSCC money only if PAC money is removed from his bundle. It’s what the DSCC has done for Obama, who doesn’t take PAC money.
Of course, it’s phony-baloney when Obama does it, and it would be just as phony if the DSCC would try to separate the money for Romanoff — which I doubt it would do.
If there’s a pile of money with tobacco money in it, it doesn’t matter which of the dollar bills you take. It’s still a pile of tobacco dollars.
And as Dan Maes might say, it’s bigger than it looks.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
