July 24, 2009 10:05 PM UTC

Cheesy Gossip on Senate Gun Vote Has Instructive Moral

• 8 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

You can read all about the latest back-and-forth between the staffs of Colorado Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet and Colorado GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams today in just about every newspaper in the state. The Denver Post, for example, has two news stories, a blog post, and an editorial up for good measure–obviously, it’s considered a meaty affair.

The Grand Junction Sentinel summarizes:

A columnist for The Washington Post missed the target in suggesting that votes Wednesday by Colorado Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet, both Democrats, in favor of a gun measure were cast only after they were approved by a New York senator, the Colorado senators’ offices said Thursday.

The head of the Colorado Republican Party, however, thought the report was dead on.

Columnist Dana Milbank’s conclusion was off by a country mile, Bennet spokeswoman Deirdre Murphy said.

“Michael does not ask permission on any of his votes,” Murphy said in a statement. “Michael gave this vote a lot of thought, considered its effect on Colorado, and came to his own decision.”

Milbank’s scattershot take that suggested Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey also sought dispensation on the vote missed the bull’s-eye, Udall spokeswoman Tara Trujillo said.

“Sen. Udall had staff researching the reach of the Colorado law as late as Tuesday night, and after we learned that Colorado’s reciprocity law had such a low threshold, he did not think the states’-rights argument against the Thune Amendment would hold up,” Trujillo said…

In The Washington Post, Milbank wrote of what he saw before the vote: “Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey and Colorado’s Mark Udall and Michael Bennet were said to have been willing to vote ‘no’ if necessary. Twenty minutes after the voting began, Bennet and Udall left the cloakroom together and walked into the chamber. Bennet went to the well to consult with (New York Sen. Charles) Schumer, who indicated that it was safe for Bennet – a product of D.C.’s St. Albans School – to vote with the NRA. Bennet looked to Udall, who gave an approving nod, and cast an ‘aye’ vote.”

We thought it would be interesting to refer back to the original C-SPAN footage of the vote in question–we found it, if you click here and scroll down to “vote 237” indicated on the left, it will pull up the 25 minutes of video for this vote.

We’re sorry we can’t embed the exact video clip (C-SPAN’s system seems to not work very well), but here’s what to watch for: at about 19:10, Udall and Bennet can be seen walking down the stairs. At 19:20, still well up on the stairs, Udall signals a ‘thumbs-up’ to the clerk and his “yes” vote is recorded, with no coaching from anybody we could see. Bennet proceeds to the bottom of the stairs–does indeed speak briefly with Sen. Chuck Schumer–and his “yes” vote is recorded a few seconds later.

The thing is, Udall wasn’t anywhere near Bennet when Bennet voted–we don’t know where the Post’s Dana Milbank got this, we’ve heard he may have even been watching on C-SPAN like everybody else. We see Udall stopping while Bennet continued down to the well, and chatting it up on the stairs with what looks like Sen. John Tester of Montana. We’ve watched the key moment a few times now and can’t really see how Udall had any interaction with Bennet at all other than coming down the stairs with him. All we’ve got to counter that is Milbank’s gossip that Bennet and Udall “were said to have been willing to vote ‘no’ if necessary.”

Like we said in the title, there’s a moral to this story–to whatever extent Senators might discuss votes being cast, and that leadership tries to manage that process, that’s total ‘dog bites man.’ There’s no news there. All the sinister play-by-play from Milbank is actually quite mundane daily Senate life until arranged for maximum vitriol in a Wadhams press statement.

But there is an underlying problem here we think is worth pointing out–Udall and Bennet didn’t have to play this stupid game at all. It was a bad amendment, even people who value gun rights (like us) thought so, and they should have voted “no.” Bennet can maybe draw more of a triangulation pass since he’s up for election in 2010, but once again we’re left wondering why Udall seems to think he’s still running for office–why is he sweating these cheap Wayne LaPierre ‘gotchas?’

They could have stuck with the advice of experts who thought this was a bad idea on the merits, who said there is enough variation in the standards for concealed weapons permits by state that honoring them across state lines would invite serious risks. Instead, they tried to preempt the attacks this amendment was designed to facilitate, knowing (and yes, maybe even Bennet checking to be sure) it would fail.

Since their votes left Wadhams unable to send out his original “they’re gonna take yer guns” press release, he came up with something else–and that, dear reader, is the moral of the story.