June 16, 2010 05:41 PM UTC

Steve King's Got a Point

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• by: Colorado Pols

Revisiting this week’s big story about a canceled fundraiser for GOP CD-4 candidate Cory Gardner, ably reported by the Fort Collins Coloradoan’s Bob Moore over the last couple of days–apparently, not even the key figure in the incident, Rep. Steve King of Iowa and his hotly controversial remarks about Barack Obama ‘favoring’ black people, understands Gardner’s motives in canceling the fundraiser. Did they not know who Rep. King is when they booked him?

The Gardner campaign canceled a planned weekend fundraiser featuring King on Monday night after the Coloradoan forwarded the comments from the Liddy show. Northern Colorado Tea Party director Lesley Hollywood told the Coloradoan on Tuesday that she had canceled King’s scheduled appearance at a Saturday rally in Loveland because the remarks don’t “fit in with Tea Party values, particularly in Northern Colorado.”

King said he called both Hollywood and Gardner on Tuesday after their cancellation announcements.

“I have spoken with her and Cory Gardner both, and neither one of them disagreed with what I said or the position I have taken,” King said in an interview with the Coloradoan. [Pols emphasis]

Gardner’s campaign manager, Chris Hansen, flatly rejected King’s characterization of his conversation with the Northern Colorado congressional candidate: “That is not an accurate reflection of Representative Gardner’s views,” he said in an e-mail…

Of course we don’t really know what Gardner’s “views” are, except that under pressure over these remarks he canceled Rep. King’s headline appearance at his fundraiser. But here’s what we think King is getting at, and without defending him, we’ll agree it’s a fair question: did Gardner not know who they were inviting? After all, these latest remarks from King, while controversial, are far from his most controversial statements since winning election to his seat in 2002. King has repeatedly made similar inferences about Obama’s race and judgment, along with comments about illegal immigrants and Muslims that would plunge just about any politician in America into major career peril. Not Rep. King, though, who loves the attention he gets from controversy, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem for his overwhelmingly Republican district either.

And that’s the giant hole in Gardner’s terse explanations for canceling this fundraiser. Rep. King is a known commodity, he’s popular on the fundraising circuit precisely because he is controversial. Meaning there’s no reason to have King headline a fundraiser, except to capitalize on his controversial image. What other purpose could he possibly serve?

The question for Gardner is–especially if he has a genuine problem with what Rep. King said Monday, which King disputes–why was this fundraiser scheduled to begin with?