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December 30, 2010 09:44 PM UTC

Top Stories of 2010 #4: The Fragging of Dan Maes

  • 36 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

An excerpt from our post, “Sept. 3, 2010: The Day the Colorado GOP Changed Forever.”

Remember this day, folks, because in the coming years politicos, reporters, bloggers and everyone with an interest in Colorado politics will point back to this day to mark the moment when the Colorado Republican Party changed completely, and perhaps irrevocably. Whether or not this change will be remembered as something positive or negative may not be known until well after Election Day in November, and maybe not until Winter 2011, when Republicans across the state elect new local and statewide leadership. But make no mistake — nothing can ever be the same in the Colorado GOP after weeks of events that culminated on Friday.

Because on Friday, Sept. 3, 2010, the State Republican Party told every Republican voter that the caucus and the primary only matter so long as you choose the candidate they want you to choose. Otherwise, your vote means nothing. Incredibly, and inexplicably, the Colorado Republican Party officially declared that a small handful of people will make decisions for you, no matter what the election results say.

Dan Maes was not a viable candidate for Governor of Colorado. He probably wasn’t a viable candidate for dog catcher in Evergreen where he lived, but that’s not what really matters. What matters is the fact that Maes, for all his flaws, received just under 200,000 votes in the August 10th GOP primary, which was enough to defeat the scandal-ravaged Scott McInnis, and had rightfully earned the Republican nomination. Regardless, on Friday, September 3rd, Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams announced in a press release that the Republican Party would not support its elected nominee for governor.

It’s been said that in the weeks between Maes’ victory in the primary and the events of the week of September 3rd, “new information” reportedly surfaced that changed the minds of Republican leaders–who had been slowly lending nominal support to Maes prior to this. We are here to tell you that this is a load of crap: the basic facts of everything, certainly enough, of what Maes had either failed to disclose or embellished from his past, as well as his famous campaign reimbursement troubles, were widely disseminated facts. Furthermore, whatever “new information” that Maes may have been threatened with in those fateful last meetings with Dick Wadhams was–this is critical to understand–dug up by Republicans, not Democrats.

In fact, we can tell you with reasonable certainty that no significant opposition research projects on Maes were ever undertaken by Democrats, who never viewed him as a threat justifying the expenditure. All of the damaging research into Maes’ background was done by the press, and Republican sources assisting and encouraging them–including after the primary.

Bottom line: the GOP leadership in Colorado more or less admitted before the primary that they didn’t care how the Republican rank-and-file actually voted. It was reported over and over, in both local and national press, that various plans to induce the withdrawal of whichever candidate won the primary were being readied. In the end, Republicans had hoped that McInnis would win; as he was considered more ‘practical,’ and therefore more tractable by a plushy alternative.

Maes, on the other hand, had everything he could hope to gain by staying in, and nothing to lose. In the end, unsuccessful Republican efforts to force Maes out served only to confuse and demoralize Republican voters on November 2nd; and the entry of the polarizing Tom Tancredo as a third-party candidate broke up the ticket, underlining the GOP’s weakness at the top.

In fact, Wadhams and the GOP have absolutely nothing to show for their machinations. Despite the flocking of Republican luminaries to Tancredo, John Hickenlooper still won over 50% of the vote, depriving Republicans of a dearly hoped-for talking point. And despite the bizarre open assault on Maes by the GOP chairman, he still got over 10% of the general election vote, preserving the GOP’s major party status. That should have been Wadhams’ goal all along; for no other reason than once McInnis imploded, the outcome of the gubernatorial race was no longer realistically in doubt. It should have been all about damage control, and minimizing the impact down the ticket from that moment forward for a party chairman doing his job.

Instead, Wadhams gambled that the same strong-arm tactics he had used to clear the primary field for Bob Schaffer in 2008, and was apparently attempted again with Jane Norton last year, could save the day: even after the voters in his party had chosen. He was wrong, he achieved nothing–and he revealed again a side of insider politics that destroys morale, empties volunteer pools, and sends the next generation of candidates looking for another line of work.

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36 thoughts on “Top Stories of 2010 #4: The Fragging of Dan Maes”

  1. If you look in the dictionary under the words” No Talent Ass Clown” it says See Dan Maes



    Denver Broncos… Still Suck!  But with Tebow they have less suckage

  3. …I’ve never found this point persuasive:

    Maes, on the other hand, had everything he could hope to gain by staying in, and nothing to lose.

    If Maes had been offered some sweet job (vs. having no job) to bait him to drop out, he would have had much more to gain by dropping out than by staying in.  If this offer didn’t happen, I would be shocked.  And I’m not easily shocked (being old and cynical).

    1. Why should he have? One day Wadhams is supporting Maes and bickering with Tancredo on the radio, the next he’s throwing Maes under the bus and practically inviting Republicans to abandon their party.

      If Maes had been offered a job to drop out, he would have lost that job within months, weeks or days of being given it.

      No, Maes did the right, politically principled thing. He ran for office, he achieved the nomination, and he stayed in to win it. He was backstabbed by Tancredo, Wadhams and a host of other GOP clowns.  

      1. And let’s face it, the GOP has propped up candidates who were a whole lot friggin worse than Dan Maes.  That’s the damn job of the GOP – propping up bad candidates.

        They still don’t give a rat’s ass about what people want.

  5. Dan had already loosed so many bullets into himself by Sept. 3rd — at least two six-shooters worth by my count — that he probably didn’t have enough bullets left to finish the job himself.

  6. The GOP should have stayed “on message” that Maes was the official candidate unless he wanted to withdraw. Much as the Dems in South Carolina did with the even more wretched candidate Alvin Greene.

    Instead Wadhams ricocheted insanely to and fro, one week denouncing Tom Tancredo and the next seeming to support him. And good Republican money that could have gone to Ken Buck or State Senate races was instead wasted on astonishingly vicious radio ads by Tom Tancredo focusing on … Dan Maes.

    The ads by Tancredo against Maes have to rank as some of the most cruel, mean-spirited attack ads ever done directly by one candidate against another, let alone by one candidate against another supposedly within the same party. The ad about Maes supposedly taking money from an “80-year-old grandmother” (political ultra-insider Freda Poundstone) was the nadir of an already lowbrow campaign.  

            1. Yet another word that doesn’t mean what you think it means.

              I brought up the proof that you guys are driven by fear, and you back up that proof by citing the fact that you guys find safety in the herd. Yes, beej, that’s the polar opposite of “contradiction.”

              I don’t think I’ve ever encountered an individual whose understanding was so lacking. What’s it like to be so dumb, beej?

              1. and discarding the others. I said nothing about a herd. If you want to talk about herd mentality and groupthink you have only to look at the cult of Obama. You know, your feeble attempts at thought are kind of cute. You’re a lot like an adorable puppy who thinks he’s smart because he caught a rabbit or something.

                1. It went over your head.

                  Let me paraphrase what we said:

                  Beej: Here, this research shows we fearful wingnuts have lots of friends.

                  Me: That’s called a herd.

                  Beej: durr…..

                  So, who told you that bit about the puppy? I know you’ve swiped so many witticisms from me that this one was swiped from somebody else.

                  1. Bad dog. Don’t run into the street.

                    I won’t expect you to get that, so let me explain. You lack the experience, insight, and caution (crudely labeled “fear” by you) to avoid doing dangerous and stupid things. Like, as I have pointed out before, electing Obama.

                    1. telling someone in the real world about experience! Adorable.

                      Here’s a test for your experience: When am I serious, and when am I jerking your chain?

          2. When The Beej says

            (Now proven by Science.)

            or

            Plus, it’s Science (TM), so you can’t disagree.

            But yet he repeatedly rejects the findings of science when it is inconvenient to his ideology.

            Perhaps large amygdalas (amygdali?) allow one to believe multiple mutually exclusive propositions?

      1. Just pointing out the obvious lie:

        In fact, we can tell you with reasonable certainty that no significant opposition research projects on Maes were ever undertaken by Democrats, who never viewed him as a threat justifying the expenditure.

        1. Which we know because the only sources you can ever cite are fourth-hand rumors on wingnut blogs. Like that SEIU violence – remember that? Remember how you couldn’t find any credible evidence that that had ever happened? Good times…

    4. I would have caucused for him if I was a registered R.  ANd I would have made a great case to persuade others.  But I wasn’t, so couldn’t and thus didn’t.

      Who did?

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