The Democratic "Unity" Rally was held this afternoon in Denver to show that things were just hunky-dorey for Sen. Michael Bennet and former challenger Andrew Romanoff (full press release from the Bennet campaign and from Colorado Democrats after the jump).
Said Romanoff:
"I am very, very proud of our grassroots team, and proud to see so many folks standing with us together in this united Democratic Party today. For not just my sake, and not Michael's sake, and not even for the sake of the Democratic Party, I'm asking you today to throw your support fully and unequivocally behind Michael Bennet for the United States Senate."
This is all pretty standard stuff in terms of the Kumbaya atmosphere, which makes it all the more curious that Colorado Republicans don't seem prepared to do the same thing just yet. Heck, GOP Gubernatorial nominee Dan Maes apparently can't even get a phone call right now from other Republicans.
We're playing a little bit of catch-up in providing our analysis of the various different outcomes from Tuesday's Primary. Spurred on by a good Politico story today from David Catanese, here's our thoughts on how and why Sen. Michael Bennet defeated Andrew Romanoff in Tuesday's Democratic Primary...
Make your predictions below on who you think will win the big statewide Primary races. Get them in before 7:00 tonight to make sure you get full bragging rights for a correct answer, and we'll think up some sort of prize for the person who makes the most correct predictions.
PREDICTIONS
U.S. Senate (Democrats)
U.S. Senate (Republicans)
Governor (Republicans)
Treasurer (Republicans)
Tiebraker: The total number of votes cast in the Republican Primary for Treasurer.
Make sure to put your predictions in a numerical, percentages format. For example: Walker Stapleton over J.J. Ament, 54-46
POLS NOTE: In order to make comments easier to read and understand, we decided to create a new post for these returns, rather than just updating the original post.
Below are the turnout numbers reported a little after 3:00 p.m. today by the SOS. Remember that there is some lag time in the reporting process (in other words, there are more ballots returned than what is listed below, but what is listed below is what the various County Clerks reported to the SOS today):
*Party/ Ballots Returned Thus Far/ Total Active Voters/ Percent Returned Democrats: 279,462/ 817,458/ 34%
Republicans: 314,264/ 855,667/ 37%
Richard Coolidge of the Secretary of State's office also included this note in today's ballot update:
Colorado County clerks may begin processing (not tabulating) ballots 15 days before the election. All 64 counties should have a good sample of mail ballots tabulated after 7:00pm tomorrow evening. Remember, 46 counties are voting exclusively by mail, so ballots received Tuesday may not be included in that original release of results. The remaining 18 counties will still have mail results, but will also need to factor in votes cast at precinct polling places (like El Paso, Pitkin, Las Animas, etc) or at vote centers (like Weld, Park, Archuleta, etc).
Our read on these numbers? The Michael Bennet campaign is going to be sweating it out tomorrow, hoping to see turnout reach levels cross well into the 300,000 level (the higher the turnout above 300,000, the better the odds that Bennet wins).
As for the GOP turnout, we're curious to see how big the undervote might be. Turnout is pretty high already considering the amount of grumbling from Republicans over their (lack of) great choices for Governor, and to a lesser extent, U.S. Senate, but if most of the returned ballots are casting a vote in the race for Governor and Senate, this benefits Scott McInnis and Jane Norton in their respective races.
New polling out this morning from Public Policy Polling has some interesting numbers across the board in the three top-ticket Primaries in Colorado:
U.S. Senate (Democrats) Michael Bennet: 49%
Andrew Romanoff: 43%
Undecided: 9%
U.S. Senate (Republicans) Jane Norton: 45%
Ken Buck: 43%
Undecided: 12%
Governor (Republicans) Scott McInnis: 41%
Dan Maes: 40%
Undecided: 19%
It looks like all of these races are going to come down to the turnout numbers, with higher turnout favoring Bennet, Norton and McInnis (because these three have the highest name ID in their respective races). The Secretary of State's office will release the latest turnout figures after 3:00 p.m. today, so check back here for that update.
Michael Bennet's holding on to a small lead the day before the Democratic primary for US Senate in Colorado, 49-43 over challenger Andrew Romanoff.
Snip
Both candidates are relatively popular with Bennet holding a 57/24 approval rating and Romanoff sporting a 52/27 favorability spread. Bennet's approval rating with primary voters was 53/22 when PPP last looked at the race in May so the spirited primary campaign doesn't appear to have had a negative impact on his overall popularity within the party, a good sign for him if he does indeed move onto the fall.
We were critical of the latest ad from Democrat Andrew Romanoff, called "Greed," for saying that Sen. Michael Bennet "pushed companies into bankruptcy and looted a billion dollars." While there are certainly votes and other issues that Romanoff could use to criticize Bennet, this ad went way beyond just negative campaigning because it outright lied in accusing Bennet of stealing from companies.
Well, the three biggest Denver news networks have all come out with their "Truth Test" or "Fact Checks" or whatever other clever name they have for checking the accuracy of campaign ads. The result: 3 out of 3 say the main message and components of the "Greed" ad are false.
UPDATE #3: In an email just sent out by the Romanoff campaign, Romanoff repeats the same canard as earlier. Clearly this has become a huge problem for the campaign, and it didn't need to be. If only Campaign Manager Bill Romjue had just kept quiet for a few more days...answering the question about DSCC support may very well prove fatal to the Romanoff campaign.
Here's Romanoff's newest statement:
I don't take any PAC money now, I have not done so at any point in this campaign, and I will not do so in the general election. I don't know how to make my stand any clearer.
To set this matter to rest, I took one further step today. I vowed to ask the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) to exclude any PAC dollars from contributions or expenditures it makes on my behalf.
We don't want to get too caught up in semantics here, but there's an important phrase in this statement. Romanoff says "I vowed to ask" the DSCC to exclude PAC dollars. He didn't vow "not to accept PAC dollars," because that would be impossible. He knows the DSCC cannot separate PAC money out of its bank account and give Romanoff only the "PAC-free" funds, so he's really just vowing to ask for something he can't have.
And on that note, we vow to ask Santa Claus for a unicorn this Christmas!
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UPDATE #2: Romanoff has issued a statement in an attempt to clarify: "After I win the primary, I will ask the DSCC to honor my pledge by excluding PAC dollars from any contributions or expenditures it makes on my behalf."
This statement is, of course, absurd, because there is no way to separate PAC money from non-PAC money when it all goes into the same account. This would be like saying you want to only eat the healthy parts of a cookie after it has already been baked.
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UPDATE: Romanoff's campaign told Politico that the Colorado Statesman article referenced below was "inaccurate." In its own story today, the Statesman stands by its original reporting:
The Statesman's editor and publisher said the newspaper stands by its story...
...Romanoff sat with a reporter from The Statesman for an interview immediately following a Jan. 19 press conference where he declared he was still running for the Senate - after rumors swirled he was instead considering a run for governor - and made his most uncompromising statement to date about his refusal to take money from political action committees, which he labeled part of an "incumbent protection racket."
"Andrew said what he said in response to a direct question about the DSCC," said Statesman editor Jody Hope Strogoff, who has covered Romanoff's political career for more than a decade. "If he'd like to make a case he was answering a different question than the one he was asked, he can do that. But he's had more than six months to correct the record."
Strogoff pointed out the Romanoff campaign hasn't been shy about challenging newspaper stories that have appeared in The Statesman or elsewhere.
This is the automated call going out to registered Democrats across the state against Sen. Michael Bennet on behalf of Andrew Romanoff, from a group calling itself "New Leadership in Colorado"--who wants you to know that they're "not one of those shady groups calling you."
But they are attacking Bennet for "voting to give a bailout" to "big banks who wrecked our economy."
It shouldn't even be necessary to note that this robocall is telling a bald-faced lie--Michael Bennet wasn't even in the Senate when the "big bank bailouts" passed in late 2008. But it's clear enough that being factual, or even remotely close to factual, is not the goal of this robocall--because robocalls are considered to be an under-the-radar way of planting messages with voters you don't necessarily want to claim as your own, that all makes sense.
According to the Colorado Statesman, writing last week about other negative radio ads that suddenly cropped up against Bennet, "New Leadership in Colorado" is a 527 run by a former AFL-CIO chief of staff named Debbie Wamsley. Who, evidently, is totally cool with lying to you if it makes you more likely to vote against Michael Bennet.
FRIDAY UPDATE: Here are the turnout numbers as of 2:45 p.m. today. It looks like a lot of voters are still holding onto their ballots:
*Party/ Ballots Returned Thus Far/ Total Active Voters/ Percent Returned Democrats: 245,477/ 817,458/ 30%
Republicans: 269,646/ 855,667/ 32% -----
Previous updates and original post after the jump
All campaigns (at least those that are really trying to win) eventually go negative in their advertising and messaging. Both candidates for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate have long since crossed into negative territory. On the Democratic side, Andrew Romanoff first crossed that threshold about 10 days ago, which in response prompted the first negative ad from Sen. Michael Bennet.
The definition of a negative ad is focusing on a perceived weakness of your opponent, as opposed to pointing out your positive aspects, and we've never had a problem with that. But Romanoff's newest negative ad targeted at Bennet, which was ripped today by the major Denver newspaper, is different.
The ad, called "Greed" (embedded after the jump), says that while working for Phil Anschutz, Bennet "pushed companies into bankruptcy and looted a billion dollars."
You read that right -- Romanoff's ad essentially says that Bennet intentionally bankrupted companies in order to steal money from them. That's way beyond a negative ad because it's factually wrong. And intentionally running inaccurate ads to smear your opponent -- well, that's a crap move that's no better than Jane Norton using 9/11 imagery as a scare tactic. Nobody can say otherwise -- not with a straight face, anyway.
Obviously, Romanoff is pulling out all of the stops in an effort to upset Bennet, but in doing so he has flushed down the toilet the primary message of his entire campaign: That he is a "different" politician who wants to be a Senator "for the rest of us."
So long, "Regular Guy Andrew Who Won't Go Negative."
Hello, "Same Old Politician Who Will Say Anything In Order to Win." Maybe it will get him a Primary victory, and maybe it won't (we still think Bennet will ultimately win). But if it does...is it really worth the cost? Intentionally spreading egregious lies about someone in your own Party, just to win?
A group called "New Leadership Colorado" sent out a press release late this evening showing Democrat Andrew Romanoff within striking distance of Sen. Michael Bennet in the race for the Democratic nomination for Senate. "New Leadership Colorado" claims that it has no ties to either Romanoff or Bennet, but obviously their interests are with Romanoff (because there would be no other reason to announce this otherwise).
The automated phone survey shows Bennet leading Romanoff 44-40, with what they say is a margin of error of +/-3.6%. Given that every other head-to-head poll released to this point has shown Bennet with a double-digit lead, this is good news for Romanoff, right?
Maybe.
The polling and memo was done by a Democratic communications firm called Zata3, a name that should be familiar to many politicos for their robocalls, direct mail and other communications tools such as text messaging.
But what Zata3 does not normally do is polling. That doesn't mean that they definitely don't have these numbers correct, but they are not a polling firm. You hire Zata3 to do persuasion phone calls or text messaging -- not polling -- just like you wouldn't normally hire a polling firm to do your direct mail (or for a real-world example, you wouldn't go to a dry cleaner to buy a sandwich). This is no knock on Zata3, it's just that it seems odd that you wouldn't use a professional polling firm if you wanted real polling results.
We wondered when we first got the press release at 6:17 PM why anyone would release something this potentially helpful so late in the day; normally you would never send something to the press this late because it would almost certainly get buried and not make it on the news. But perhaps that was the point -- to put it out late enough that news outlets wouldn't have time to really check into the data and the "pollster."
Democrat Andrew Romanoffhas sold his Washington Park house and used most of the proceeds to shore up his underfunded Senate bid against incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet. As Eli Stokols of Fox 31 reports:
Romanoff, who bought his home one block of east of Washington Park in the 1990s, sold it to a developer for $360,000. From that, he loaned $325,000 to his campaign.
Last quarter, Romanoff raised $620,000 in contributions, his campaign's best showing to date. Bennet's campaign raised $1.63 million during the same period.
Given that the U.S. is suffering through the worst housing marketever, maybe Romanoff should be touting his real estate skills as a candidate.
For those who would lament that it is sad that both candidates in the Democratic Senate Primary are going negative, we'll say this: Right or wrong, it was inevitable, just as it was inevitable that Republicans Ken Buck and Jane Norton would attack each other in their Senate race.
The campaign of Sen. Michael Bennet went up this evening with its own negative ad in response to the attack ad started today by Andrew Romanoff.
Both sides will argue over which ad is more damaging, but Bennet's ad hits what has really been Romanoff's only message -- that Bennet takes PAC money and he doesn't. The Romanoff ad against Bennet certainly hurts, but Bennet has other things he can talk about; Romanoff has put all his chips in the PAC attack basket. As we wrote before, we thought Romanoff should have gone up on TV with a message about his own record first, rather than using his PAC message out of the gate, in part so that he would at least have had another narrative to fall back on should the PAC thing blow up.
Given Romanoff's small campaign warchest and Bennet's ability to drive this ad relentlessly, it's not hard to see how the Bennet ad will hurt more.
This back and forth also shows the benefit of being the frontrunner in a race; Bennet got to sit back and stay positive until Romanoff was forced to go negative, and in response Bennet's campaign could generate press for a day making Romanoff look bad. They could then go negative themselves with the message that "Romanoff did it first, so we had to respond." The same thing is happening in the Republican Primary, where Norton went negative first because she is trailing Buck.
Democrat Andrew Romanoff has officially crossed over into negative campaigning with his newest TV ad. The ad bashes Sen. Michael Bennet for taking money from banking and oil interests while trying to make the point that he has been corrupted by big money influences.
Romanoff has said for months that he was going to keep his campaign about issues and wouldn't go negative against Bennet -- a position we always thought was silly to take, given that there's no way Romanoff was going to beat Bennet without going negative. But Romanoff does not have enough money for a significant TV buy; this ad may damage Bennet, but not enough so that Romanoff can ultimately overtake him in the primary.
The end result is that Romanoff looks more than a bit hypocritical in now going negative, but won't likely gain enough of a foothold for it to be worth the strategic change. Romanoff is basically just throwing rocks at a windowless building at this point.
The Q2 fundraising numbers for Democrat Andrew Romanoff are out. Romanoff raised $619,814 in Q2, spent $657,454 and now has $464,340 cash on hand (compared to $2.6 million COH for Sen. Michael Bennet).
These are decent fundraising numbers for Q2 for Romanoff, but his low cash on hand figure is no doubt why the campaign was refusing to release numbers on its own. From what we hear, Romanoff has spent at least $300,000 on television, which means he's going to be spending every cent as he raises it from here on out (considering that he'll still need money for office space, staff salaries, etc.) And while Romanoff's Q2 haul was good by his own historical standards, it's probably not enough to get him the kind of TV time he needs to defeat Bennet.
Newspapers from around the state have begun rolling out their endorsements of candidates in advance of the Aug. 10 Primary. We'll be keeping track of these endorsements after the jump (and please help out in the comments section).
How important are these endorsements? That depends entirely on what you do with them; newspaper endorsements are only as useful as a campaign makes them out to be. Endorsements from a variety of larger-name newspapers can look good on a TV or radio ad, for example, and can help give the impression that a candidate has support from across the state. Obviously, this kind of strategy is more important for an underdog candidate, but even a frontrunner can benefit from this kind of "third-party validation." Outside of a campaign using the endorsement in paid media, these endorsements have little impact.
The campaign of Sen. Michael Bennet has announced a cash on hand total of $2.6 million, or about $2 million more than both Republicans Jane Norton and Ken Buck have reported. The campaign of Democrat Andrew Romanoff is not releasing fundraising reports itself, which means that we may have to wait at least a week to find out what the Democratic challenger raised in Q2.
UPDATE: According to TPM, Clinton won't be making appearances for Romanoff and that "A Clinton source says the email posted below is likely to be the only campaign effort on Romanoff's behalf." Sorry Democrats, looks like no Colorado visits from Big Bill.
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The campaign of Andrew Romanoff today sent out an email with an endorsement from former President Bill Clinton (text after the jump).
This is easily Romanoff's most significant endorsement (no offense, Dennis Apuan), and now he has a Democratic President to match Barack Obama's support of incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet. So the big question: Who has Jimmy Carter?
