April 20, 2010 04:17 AM UTC

Post provides donor history on GOP contributor who was angry at Markey over health-care vote

• 3 Comments
• by: Jason Salzman

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

At the end of March, The Denver Post reported that a GOP donor sent Republican congressional candidate Cory Gardner a $1,000 check with a note, “You can thank Betsy Markey’s vote [for the health-care law] for this check.”

This story was included in a Post article, and repeated in a subsequent Post Spot blog item and then the Washington Post, without the context that the donor, Fred Vierra, was a major GOP contributor, giving over $400,000 to GOP candidates nationwide since 1998, including huge money to lots of big name Colorado Republicans. I wrote about this previously.

Unfortunately, this story of incomplete information gets even worse.

But this time The Post should be congratulated for providing context, not omitting it, and for publishing what should have been included in its initial reporting, namely that Vierra was “regular contributor to Republicans” (even though The Post still did not inform readers of the size and scope of Vierra’s donations).

The Post revealed this afternoon on its Spot blog that on Jan. 13, more than two months before Markey voted for the health-care law on March 21, Vierra had already given Gardner $2,000, making him among Gardner’s top individual donors and bringing him close to the maximum an individual is allowed to give ($2,400 for the primary).

This is critical context for this reason: When Vierra handed Gardner his $2,000 check on Jan. 13, Vierra could not have included a note, like he did later, expressing how pissed he was at Markey for her health-care stance, because at that time she had only voted against the health-care bill. (She voted against an earlier version of the health care bill November 7, and she had made no indication that she would switch her vote.)

After Markey switched her position, and voted for the law, Vierra gave an additional $400 to Gardner, bringing his donation to the $2,400 maximum allowed. So how did he make a $1,000 donation without breaking the law? His wife, Roxanne Vierra, gave $600, as the Spot pointed out this afternoon.

The Spot reported that neither the Gardner campaign nor Vierra mentioned the previous $2,000 donation, when interviewed by The Post about it in March. The Spot stated:

“What Vierra didn’t say – and neither did Gardner’s campaign – was that the retired Cherry Hills Village resident had already donated $2,000 to Gardner.”

This information was not available on databases, like Vierra’s other extensive donations, until last week when quarterly fundraising reports were posted.

Chris Hansen, Gardner’s campaign manager, told me this morning: “We did not mislead anybody on anything. I think I should make that clear. I mean, we don’t need to.”

Asked if he told The Post about Vierra’s $2,000 donation in January, Hansen said, “Basically the conversation was a long conversation, with me reading off all the different notes [written to Gardner from donors]. At a certain point it got kind of redundant. I probably have a pile of 30 or so. After that,[The Post] asked for some phone numbers of people, and I gave them over to [The Post]. Truth be told, that was about a month ago. I don’t exactly remember the conversation.”

“The reality is,” he said, “if you want to substitute Fred Vierra for any of our many other dozens of notes, the story would still have been there.”

If Hansen makes these names available, let’s hope reporters check the donors’ histories and ask them when they last gave to the candidate.