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July 26, 2007 08:45 PM UTC
24 Comments
Things keep looking more and more grim for the congressman
Is it big news when someone goes back to college for a Masters, or gets a job on the staff of a committee, or gets a job on K Street ?
My impression, there are about 5,000 folks who staff the offices of the nation’s legislators, and they hang in cliques, and swap jobs when they think they can get a higher status post.
All of them work insane hours for not that great pay. Almost all of them are hoping to run for Congress themselves one day. Most are under 35 and single. It’s a grind, and some folks wear out.
And despite what they tell themselves, they are not necessarily the nation’s best and brightest.
I don’t know, but since he is a Republican, and took the seat of a retiring Republican, maybe he inherited Joel’s team ? That would explain a whole heap of disgruntlement.
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Ordinarily that might be true but given the bad blood between Lamborn and Hefley after the ’06 GOP primary, I can’t imagine Lamborn would have kept anyone on staff nor do I believe any of Hefley’s people would have wanted to stay around (unless, of course, it was to sabotage Lamborn’s office ops).
Chuck B./Dustin O.,
It is important to note (which you failed to do) that there is tension (some times even hostility) between DC and District staff for virtually every Rep./Sen. in the country. I’ve seen it first hand. The “rumor” you are reporting isn’t news, so you shouldn’t report it as such.
You also fail to mention that Congressional staff turn-over, especially among “Hill Rats”, is high.
It is not uncommon for Hill staff to jump from member to member as career advancements open up in other offices. This also leads to very little loyalty among Hill staffers. It is widely known that District staff is a lot more loyal to their member than most “Hill Rats.”
This is post is complete farce.
Quite a reaction to something that’s normal and happens all the time.
…did I strike a nerve? Are the rats biting whatever they can as they leave? Or maybe Chris Harvin is resigning today and I haven’t gotten the memo yet.
Oh and precisely zero Hefley staffers on board with Lamborn last time I checked.
I think .45 was saying that it was a silly post in the first place and that trying to make an issue out of it is also quite absurd.
Who cares if that guy is resigning or someone else in the office is moving to another office? It’s quite normal and far from scandal.
My guess is that every other member of the CO delegation has had some type of turnover this year.
…your sorry loser routine over Congressman Lamborn is stupid and immature. If you spent half the time you do fretting about how big bad Doug Lamborn beat your boy poor little Jeff Crank, and tried to do something about taking back the State House of the State Senate, you’d be a lot more useful to the Republican Party and the people of CO-5.
Crank lost. Get over it.
Lamborn is actually a conservative, not a RINO, Rockafeller Republican like Crank and Hefley are. Helfey’s staff was a bunch of RINO pukes just like Crank, its a good thing Doug didn’t hire them.
P.S. I don’t know who Chris Harvin is and frankly I don’t really care.
He’s trying to help defeat Lamborn. There’s a difference. If Lamborn beat Crank under normal circumstances, than this would be different. But the fact that Lamborn was so oppessed with winning his seat that he trashed the other people in the field bought himself a bunch of people hell bent on trashing him. Lamborn didn’t abide by Reagan’s 11th commandment, so why should he expect that people will abide by it in regards to him? So guess what…your guy is sleazy. Accept it! And as long as he is, expect this sort of stuff to be circulated on a regular basis
Doug Lamborn had a GREAT deal of respect within many Republican households, including mine, prior to the means by which the Christian Coalition of Colorado and the Club for Growth resorted to “juicing” his campaign in 2006.
Instead of Barry Bonds’ coming out and reaming professional baseball players’ for their use of steroids and leading the charge against the abuse of America’s pasttime, he has played “games” about steroids–“I didn’t know I was using them; I thought I was using a vitamin cream” etc., etc. It was always somebody else’s fault, not Barry’s. So, is there any wonder Bud Selig is having a hard time honoring this man, Barry Bonds, because of the way he has soiled the game?
If Doug Lamborn had stood up in the 5th CD primary in 2006, and repudiated the tactics of the Christian Coalition of Colorado and the Club for Growth for “juicing” his campaign, and publicly apologized to Jeff Crank, the entire party would have given him major props for being a stand up kind of guy. Instead, like Barry Bonds, he sat out–he laid down–on doing the right thing. So, is there any wonder why the 75% of the Republicans who voted against Doug Lamborn in the 2006 primary are having a hard time honoring him?
Barry Bonds will break Hank Aaron’s record. But, whether organized baseball puts an asterisk by his name, as they did Roger Maris’, the public will always have that asterisk by his name.
So it is with Doug Lamborn. There is and ever will be an asterisk by his name, NO MATTER whether he is returned to office in 2008 or not.
I think the thing that has most surprised Lamborn, the Hotalings, and people like blah and other Lamborn supporters, however, is that there are in fact people, such as me, who are not associated with any campaign other than one–send ANYONE to Washington DC as our Congressman in 2008 EXCEPT DOUG LAMBORN.
As for me, I’m personally weary of pointing out Doug Lamborn’s deficiencies, something which has been easy enough to do, but for which I’ve taken way too much personal time to do and only will sporadically undertake in the future, when the time is right. But, I’m hoping, praying, Jeff Crank runs, but, if not my 2nd choice is Andy MacElhany, and then and only if neither of the two of them would declare would I be able to support Bentley Rayburn, while having deep misgivings at the same time. The differences I have seen in Lamborn, Rayburn, and Crank are summed up in 3 sentences. Lamborn needs a paycheck. Rayburn needs a stepping stone. Crank wants to serve.
Frankly, though, after Lamborn’s disastrous fundraising in the 2nd quarter, I’m stunned there has not been a declaration yet by someone to take him on. Perhaps both Crank and Rayburn, who have jaw boned about taking Lamborn on are just that–jaw boning.
Before the election started, I liked Lamborn second best of all the guys and I was pretty strongly against Crank (because I thought he was just riding Hefley’s coat tails and I was not a Hefley fan). But during the election, Lamborn really disgusted with his tactics while Crank impressed me with his abilities.
I think Rayburn is fairly self serving, but I can happily support either him or Crank. Largely the difference I see is that Rayburn is desperately trying to get himself elected while Crank is being drafted by a much wider support base. I think Rayburn is being played for a fool by the likes of Goznell, Perkins, and a few others who are “drafting” him to run. I just hope that Crank and Rayburn figure out a way to have just one of them run against Lamborn so that we can be done with him. I’ll take either one, but not Lamborn!
in a 6-way race, 30% probably wins. Didn’t Lamborn win with 27% ?
But
in a 3-way race, it’s going to take about 40%. In theory, the lowest one could win with is 34%, but that assumes Crank and Bent run neck-and-neck. Not likely.
If Bent only pulls 30%, then Lamborn needs 36% to win.
If he only draws 25%, Lamborn needs 38%.
If, as I’m guessing, Rayburn can only pull 20%, then Lamborn would have to get more than half of 80%.
What are the chances of that ?
So let Bent run, don’t hassle him – just let him get up in front of people and be himself. That’s the best thing Crank could do to win voters over.
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Lamborn will pull about 25% in the primary because of the extremist wing of the party. These are the Doug Brucites who actually think Crank and Rayburn are secret homosexual lovers bent on creating a communist society while masquerading as Republicans. Then he will pull about 15% more because he is the incumbent (ie he gets free media, franking, and he is the easy choice for people not politically involved). I have him getting 40% in the election because of this.
That leaves about 60% for Crank and Rayburn to split. And because Lamborn’s support is pretty rigid, Crank and Rayburn have to attack each other to split the 60%. This also means that they have to win about 66% of the non-Lamborn vote to beat Lamborn. That is too risky for me.
So I concede the risk of a 3-way.
But I thought that Rayburn drew most of his support from the same “demographic” as Lamborn, the anti-tax, social conservative, niche-religious that you might refer to as Dobsonites.
As I recall, ol’ Bent said the Iraq invasion presented an unprecedented opportunity to proselytize the Muslim world.
So I thought he would take more votes from Lamborn than from Crank.
Different question: would you rather have Rayburn win over Lamborn, if Crank was out of the running ?
I would happily support Rayburn over Lamborn. I think he has a great resume, but I am a bit concerned about his personality. The guy is exceptionally bright, but his enormous ego rubs people the wrong way. Because of that, I am not sure he would do well in Congress. He might turn off all the other ego maniacs and not be able to form coalitions. Aside from his ego, I think he is basically a good guy and of strong character. As you can see in my previous posts, I am very big on politicians having character which is why I fundamentally oppose Lamborn.
The race last year was very complicated. I have a different take on it than that Rayburn pulled from Lamborn. (I am no expert on this, but I do enjoy tossing around ideas.)
It looks like there were 4 blocks of voters in the primary in 06. One group was the anti-government, anti-everyone else, angry group of quasi-anarchists. While these folks compose only a small percentage of the Republican Party, they all vote. That group went for Lamborn because they are really just dumb sheep who actually believe that people like Jeff Crank support the homosexual agenda (come on, get real). That group was about 15-20% of votes cast and they will go for Lamborn again because Rayburn and Crank will somehow tear apart society as we know it.
Then there was the establishment group. Those folks went for Jeff Crank because he was the inside man and endorsed by Hefley. This also included the business community who wanted a status quo candidate with business connections.
Then there was the moderate group. These folks split their vote between Anderson and Rivera and composed about 25% of the electorate.
Finally there was the outsider group. This was probably made up of Christian conservatives who disliked Lamborn for his lack of ethics, were uncomfortable with Crank’s insider status, and were more conservative than Rivera and Anderson. This group composed about 25% of the electorate and was going to split between Rayburn and Bremer. (The reason I believe this is that Bremer was doing well in the polls until about 2 weeks before the election when Rayburn dropped 150K of his own money and switched places with him. As a result, I have to think that Rayburn and Bremer were swapping votes and were largely appealing to a group untouched by other candidates.)
So moving forward, I like Rayburn or Crank better than Lamborn. But I do think that Crank probably has the better chance of winning. I’ll support either one, but I hope they dont both run.
“…your sorry loser routine over Congressman Lamborn…”
Actually every person in Congressional District 5 daily “loses” as Lamborn continues to fail miserably in Congress. Post after post on websites and blogs like this one point out his inadequacies.
Your technique of lashing out is precisely what I expect from a Lamborn apologist.
I want a leader in Congress, not a buffoon. Show me the leader and I will get behind them. Whether it’s a good conservative Republican like Jeff Crank or Andy McElhany or a moderate like Sallie Clark or John Anderson… I want a leader who solves problem and gets ahead of the issues before they’re out of control (can anyone say Pinon Canyon?)
If Lamborn’s staff is leaving because of Lamborn’s inability to run an office, then that is news because people aren’t leaving because they can’t stand the “grind”.
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to run the DC office or the offices back in the District.
That’s what he has a Chief of Staff for.
Lamborn is there to go vote and give speeches. Which he does…uh…ummm…very well!!!! (lightning bolt)
Lamborn’s job is not to run the day-to-day operations. If those are going poorly (Nebraska flags) then the Chief of Staff needs to figure stuff out. Lamborn must delegate duties as he tries to be an effective congressman.
For example, he clearly doesn’t write his own speeches so his speech writer should be fired for inserting all of those “umms” and stammers in the speech.
In the end, huge sums being spent on franking is not even Lamborn’s fault. How could he ever be expected to keep a rein on what his ultra-liberal staff does once they get their hands on our tax dollars?!
you mean those are not “ad libbed”?
On the positive side, at least he doesn’t have a lisp.
for the call that he has a seat on Armed Services!
Runs the day to day operations, they are the extension of the Boss. Bad boss, bad chief of staff. In my mind, they go hand in hand.