October 14, 2006 05:48 PM UTC

Beauprez Staffer(s) to Frog-March?

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• by: Colorado Pols

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez has, by most estimates, successfully narrowed Democrat Bill Ritter’s lead in the polls in the last few weeks through a hard-hitting series of attacks on Ritter’s record as Denver District Attorney. These attacks have been carried out through Beauprez’s own campaign as well as supporting 527s.

Beauprez’s campaign has put out a constant stream of “Cold Case Archive” press releases (after a bit of a late start) that have contained lots of information about the various defendants Ritter is alleged to have been “soft” on. Detailed arrest records, information about subsequent convictions in other jurisdictions—also interesting about most of them is that they made sure to include an “A.K.A.” name below the person’s real name. Like the one you see here. No doubt there’s a focus group somewhere who discovered that people come off scarier with an alias.

In any event, according to this morning’s Rocky Mountain News there’s so much information in these press releases—and especially the “Carlos Estrada Medina” TV spot—that the Ritter camp believes it came from protected law enforcement databases. Unauthorized use of which (to smear a political opponent, for example) is against the law:

At the heart of the controversy is the question of how the Republican congressman’s campaign obtained information that his opponent says is highly restricted and only available to law enforcement.

“Your campaign broke the law,” an angry Bill Ritter told Beauprez during a debate taped at Fox 31 News in Denver on Friday.

Ritter accused the congressman of getting someone to improperly obtain information from the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database for use in an ad criticizing his handling of a plea-bargain for an illegal immigrant offender while Ritter was Denver’s district attorney.

At Ritter’s urging, CBI spokesman Lance Clem said the agency will investigate whether Beauprez’s campaign violated state and federal law.

Beauprez denied any wrong-doing and accused Democrat Ritter of trying to switch the subject from his record of granting plea-bargains that the congressman contends allowed immigrants – both legal and illegal – to avoid deportation…

Once again, the one guy Beauprez should be able to count on to keep his mouth shut…didn’t.

So, how did the Beauprez campaign know that offenders with three different names and the same birthday – Nov. 2, 1979 – were really the same guy?

Beauprez campaign manager John Marshall told a 9News reporter Wednesday that “in federal criminal databases, the guy’s information matches up.”

But Marshall seemed to back off from that statement Friday…

Maybe because he was copping, right there, to something that could send somebody he knows to federal prison for 10 years? We know you’re sick of us blaming Marshall for Beauprez’s general train wreck of a campaign. But this guy, far from the “boy wonder” he was touted to be, is a colossal moron: and he may have just green-lighted the Beauprez campaign for a criminal investigation singlehandedly. Heckuva job, Johnnie.

The allegation here, according to people we’ve talked to, is potentially quite serious—but it’s going to take more time to sort this out than we have before Election Day. And it remains a fact that no matter what happens regarding the sources of the attacks in question, they have been effective to at least a few percentage points’ extent.

Bottom line: People have done worse to get elected and still kept their jobs, often by throwing underlings like John Marshall under the bus when the time came. Visit Illinois sometime and see for yourself.