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October 20, 2010 07:27 PM UTC

Dick's Disaster, Anyone?

  • 39 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

There are two major narratives taking shape in Colorado, one of which will emerge as the definitive story of the 2010 elections here. The first is the one you know, because you can’t visit a media outlet without hearing it over and over: 2010 is a Republican “wave year,” Democrats are desperately fighting against an inevitable tide of voter discontent and will pay with their majorities at all levels of national, state and local government.

The other narrative, however, has only haltingly broken through the saturation of bad stories for Democrats–many of which rest all of their assumptions on polling models that may or may not be an accurate reflection of what constitutes a “likely voter.” There is a growing concern among pollsters, and political strategists in general, that “likely voter” models are skewed against Democrats based on little more than empirical speculation, and may not reflect who will actually show up to vote.

Lurking just beneath the surface of those assumptions here in Colorado are a series of candidate recruitment disasters and bad primary election choices. We’ve covered these events in detail as they’ve occurred: the punking of gubernatorial candidate Josh Penry by GOP kingpins in favor of Scott McInnis, McInnis’ spectacular collapse under allegations of plagiarism, Ken Buck’s “Tea Party”-fueled primary win over the more electable Jane Norton–and the latest damaging exposure of multiple Republican legislative candidates with violent and other criminal records.

And as the Colorado Independent’s John Tomasic reports today, the one person all of these breakdowns have in common, GOP chairman Dick Wadhams, is taking fire once again.

The Colorado Republican Party’s effort to win back top seats has been characterized nationally as a “gaffapalooza” and a “farce,” with many analysts pointing fingers at state GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams. Observers on the ground in Colorado, including GOP staffers and candidates, say that in the year of the Tea Party, Wadhams simply failed to properly vet candidates. The top-of-the-ticket false starts and shuffling have drawn plenty of attention and spawned mockery but the farce grows dark at the bottom of the ticket, where GOP candidates with criminal histories of violence and abuse dot the ballot…

The problems for the GOP this year don’t stop at the top of the ticket, and they don’t stop with the chairman. Wadhams’ point-man in the state House campaigns, Rep. Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, played down the criminal histories of many of this year’s GOP candidates. He told the Denver Post he was unaware any of the candidates even had police records.

“This is the challenge of having ordinary people running for office,” he said.

A review of records that have drawn the attention of reporters and bloggers this fall…suggests that “ordinary” is a word only someone who processes rap sheets for a living might use to describe these men…

Republican party 2010 staffers and operatives who spoke to the Colorado Independent on condition they would remain anonymous agreed that Wadhams has failed to vet candidates and hobbled the party.

“I think Wadhams has been astonishingly ineffective,” said one. “More than that, he has been an impediment to success. Chest-thumping obnoxious radio interviews do not make for great leadership…He trashed McInnis. He trashed Buck. … Find me someone who Wadhams hasn’t trashed and I’ll show you someone new to town. Why didn’t he put people through the [vetting] paces instead? You’ve got to put candidates through the paces today. The online world is murder. If the party doesn’t find it, someone else will, and then it will be all over the media.”

Our view: as we’ve watched this election season unfold, we’ve been struck by the dissonance in the media between an airtight insistence that Republican triumph is inevitable, and the steady drip of revelations about the actual Republican candidates running for office that would seem to, by any objective measure, say the exact opposite. It seems clear to us that most major media outlets decided very early on that the narrative of a massive Republican wave was correct, and have proven reluctant to accept the changing nature of the situation here in Colorado.

Dick Wadhams is renowned for his ability to tirelessly browbeat the media with his version of every story. It’s his job to flack the party line, of course, and at least until McInnis’ implosion threw the governor’s race into chaos, Wadhams has generally done it well. But a combination of presuppositions in the press about this election, and Wadhams’ efforts to shape news coverage may have left the media in Colorado inattentive when things started to unravel in broadly discernable ways–even as they faithfully reported the individual pieces of the puzzle.

Because we submit to you: from the revelations about legislative candidates with criminal backgrounds–the lede in this story, the fact that the records uncovered were almost 2-1 GOP and only GOP candidates had violent crimes in their past, the media has largely buried–to the much-too-slow realization that Ken Buck has critically wounded himself since the primary, the trainwreck(s) in the gubernatorial race, the laughable candidacies of Scott Gessler and Walker “Bush” Stapleton…is the GOP ticket not in danger of unraveling, folks? Would it not be unraveling, at the very least, in any other election year?

In two weeks, that question will be answered. If the conventional wisdom was correct all along, and the GOP “wave year” is enough to overcome these failures of candidate recruitment and self-inflicted wounds–or, if the story just isn’t disseminated widely enough to be heard over the assumptions–perhaps this criticism of Wadhams will subside. But if not…

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39 thoughts on “Dick’s Disaster, Anyone?”

  1. Even they can see the damage that has occurred under Democrat control of government for the last several years. They’re not going to hawk your faux narratives anymore.

    1. The libs have had the media in their pocket for how many decades?

      We get them on our side for ONE election and they make it sound like the end of the world. It’s not, it’s just paybacks for letting liberals ruin the country!

      Totally agree BJ, the media is just trying to undo the damage they helped cause.

      1. Nearly all families have more then one person unemployed – a cousin, uncle, son, spouse.

        Democrat policies have killed jobs and cratered private investment.

        1. Democratic policies have nothing to do with where republicans put us with Bush and keep us here with NO.

          As Long As President Obama is President. the “private” (very wealthy republican elite) investment is not cratered… it is FROZEN intentionally. Just like under FDR.

          to ask the wealthy to reinvest in America is never going to loosen up those funds. (as long as Obama is President)

          FORCING the wealthy to reinvest must be done.

          Allowing Bushes tax breaks for the wealthy to expire is a start.  

          1. Why won’t Democrats defend their policies?

            Even Hickenlooper is saying he’ll cut government growth and government spending. Of course it is a lie, but it makes a great ad.

            1. Revenue shortfalls demand he do that. What do you want him to do, make shit up like some of the other candidates?

              Democrats are defending policies all over the place. Just because you disagree with their conclusions doesn’t mean they’re not.

              The stimulus kept the economy from sliding off a cliff, though it wasn’t big enough because of Republican demands — Democrats compromised with Republicans, believing the negotiations were in good faith, then Republicans said hell no anyway and all voted against the bill, which included one of the biggest tax cuts in history. Go figure.

              1. Then you lopped of the 6% spending cap and abused Obama bailout $’s.

                You do understand that Obama bailout dollars are your taxes, recycled in DC with their 15% rake-off.

        2. My sister was out of work for over a year.  She lost her job at the beginning of the recession in October 2008.  Who was in charge then?  That’s right, I remember: W.

          She finally got work (a part-time job) in November 2009.  She recently started graduate school.

          From Oct. 2008, when she lost her full-time job, until August 2010, when she started grad school, she didn’t have health insurance.  And guess which party didn’t give a shit about her, but just did everything it could to make sure that, if she got sick, she’d die….

      2. as media is corporate and republicans believe in a corporate dominated society (Fascism)

        the media is AUTOMATICALLY in the republican pocket.

        nice attempt at deflection though. (your bunt barely cleared the plate)

  2.  when this is all over Dick Wadhams will be (metaphorically) “burned at the stake”, “turned out to pasture”. Privately Wadhams will be quietly given his walking papers. This is to say when the blame game starts, republicans will publicly blame “Obama Zombies”, “the Ignorance of the electorate” or the “Will of the people was Ignored!”

    anything but the acceptance of their OWN tea bag republican extremism, and the Public’s rejection of their misinforming propaganda.

    Conveniently forgetting dismissing the will of the people was expressed on election day.(That is of course, if all the ballots are counted accurately.)

      1. candidates. The TeaParty is just a lot of impotent rage. They will split the GOP into electable and unelectable candidates. The crazier the candidate from the right, the safer Dems become over time.  

        1. Parties are supposed to vet candidates. Tea bag republicans became so blinded with hate… They went for the most extreme possible (believing Rush) without any consideration that the world is much larger than their narrow Black/White view of it.

          Wad hams did not think his pics would actually be looked into.

          Lucky for Democrats, The tea bag republicans refuse to face reality and learn from their mistakes. Nor admit to any… EVER!

          Humility is not in their vocabulary.

          1. Democrats nominate just as many people they regret later. It doesn’t matter anyway, as I have said until I’m blue in the face, we could nominate anybody this year down the ticket and they will be elected.

            I hope all those evil conservatives who know how to throw punches have you peeing your pants in January!

  4. Peddling the Independent as absolute truth.

    Outside of a few bitter Republicans, the rest know that the few GOP gaffes this year are certainly not the responsibility of Wadhams.

    Pols needs to get someone on staff who’s ever worked for a political party.  The GOP/Wadhams likely did ID targeted districts and try to recruit candidates.  But how many really good candidates told him “no”?  Sometimes he can talk them into it but often not.  

    How many ‘crazies’ popped up that he constructively tried to disuade that ignored his advice?  “No one’s going to tell me I can’t run!”  Many are weeded out through the primary process.  Some aren’t.

    As for the Governor’s race, McInnis was a long time party leader who was responsible to his supporters and his party for putting together a professional and viable campaign.  That includes the standard self (oppo) research package.  For that matter, it was his opponents’ (primary & general) responsibility to do the same research on him.  McInnis was a known quantity; doing hard core research on him (which the silver bullet was) would be akin to doing hard core research on your own mother.

    The state party isn’t responsible for doing research on major candidates.  With the universally agreed upon premise that McInnis was going to win the primary, no one vetted Maes.

    There are a lot of examples of insignificant and/or crazy people being listed on a primary ballot.  They are usually an afterthought b/c they are inconsequential to the outcome.

    Obviously we have the benefit of hindsight and ‘Plan B’s’ will likely be checked out more carefully in the future.  But the responsibility for that isn’t necessarily clear.  In some states, like Colorado, parties don’t have the resources to do expensive research on multiple candidates.  In other states they do.  Perhaps the press will start to do minor party and third place crazy guy major party candidate research.  But their budgets don’t make that an easy decision either.

    Opponents should definitely do it.  Though they have strategic reasons for unloading it on a schedule that don’t coincide with the party’s objectives.

      2. He wasn’t raising the money and his personal position, financial and otherwise, wasn’t pretty. If his ego hadn’t been the size of the Western Slope, he would have won another term in the state Senate, earned a few more chops and lived to fight another day.

    2. Wadhams is very good at what he does.  It was the Tea Party, not Wadhams, that saddled the GOP with disasters like Dan Maes and Ken Buck.

      Now, they’re blaming Wadhams for not making them follow his leadership?

      1. Wadhams has to bear some of the blame for Maes; if he hadn’t shoved Penry out the side door, the Tea Partiers wouldn’t have needed to put their hopes and dreams on the poor overburdened shoulders of Dan Maes when McInnis crashed.

        1. But when the Republican wave is tallied in Colorado, here is the result:

          Gov-Democrat

          U.S. Senate Democrat

          U.S. House 1 GOP gain (maybe), for 4-3 dem edge

          legislature both houses Democrat

          Secy of state  Democrat

          Treasurer  Democrat

          Attorney General  Republican.

          At that point, expect the Tea Party goons to blame Wadhams for their own failings.

            1. STan’s problem is that he hasn’t had enough money early to run his devastating ad.  Now, it’s lost in the astonishing clutter of 6,000 ads a week in Denver (according to cnn)

      2. If Wadhams is so good at what he does, then why has CO trended so blue over the past 3 or 4 elections? Dan Hawkins is supposed to be a good football coach, but he can’t seem to win games. Appropriate analogy?

        Also, the Birchers Tea Party has always been there in the GOP. But in this election cycle they’ve gained some traction. This appeared to catch Wadhams flat-footed. He never seemed to have a plan B.

            1. But BJ will surely call for his head if the election doesn’t go the way he just knows it’s gonna. And as everyone knows, Dick can’t ignore a blathering BJ.

        2. He didn’t actually say what Wadhams does.

          I think what Wadhams does is lose elections, and he’s getting damned good at it.  What was his last big victory?  Thune?

          So I agree with V’ger.

  5. on the Pubs Colorado disaster?  How about a clean Democratic sweep in the state’s top races?  Go Dems!

    I think the local media is trying to be objective.  Colorado has escaped most of the repulsive bullying tactics of the Tea Party Republicans elsewhere because we are a centrist state.

    The media helped hype Wadhams’ reputation as a master political strategist to be sure.  But it is up to the Dem candidates themselves to highlight their opponents’ failures, not the press.

    So far, they’ve done a good job.

  6. Reading between the lines, it sounds like Frank McNulty’s crew is trying to preemptively scapegoat Dick Wadhams ahead of November 2nd.

    Donors cannot be happy with Frank or Dick at this point.  

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