August 07, 2010 05:46 PM UTC

Jus ad Bellum

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• by: JeffcoBlue

If you cut through all the rhetoric and acrimony of the past few weeks, you can boil down the Democratic Senate primary campaign to one simple question: does Andrew Romanoff deserve to beat Michael Bennet?

It’s a complicated question. Supporters of Romanoff mostly point to policy statements, and criticism their campaign has had of votes Bennet has taken as Senator. If you compare the actual legislative records of Bennet and Romanoff, understanding that Bennet’s is shorter and at a much higher level, a more accurate picture emerges.

And one thing is certain: Andrew Romanoff is no “progressive hero.” As I have laid out in previous diaries, Romanoff was an extremely cautious legislator who frequently made deals with Republicans to pass legislation. Romanoff was a principal figure in the 2006 special session of the Colorado legislature which passed onerous anti-immigrant legislation. Hoping to “stave off” Republicans who wanted to make immigrants an electoral issue, what they passed was sufficiently misguided that much of it was repealed shortly afterward.

Earlier in the week, I blogged about Romanoff’s sponsorship in 2003 of a resolution praising President George W. Bush for ‘protecting America from Saddam Hussein.’ Romanoff’s sponsorship of Senate Joint Resolution 03-016 went well beyond merely voting in favor of it as some other Democrats did at the time, and reflects a tacit desire on the part of Romanoff to be identified publicly as a supporter of the invasion of Iraq.

In addition, it is an underreported fact that Romanoff is a recent graduate of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The DLC is frequently credited with moving the Democratic Party to the right in the 1990s, and many progressives consider it to be one of the party’s key corrupting influences.

This brings me to the heart of the question. Michael Bennet is not a perfect hero of progressivism either, but he has cast many good votes. He has not obstructed the progressive agenda, and votes he has made against things I would have voted for were never decisive. Bennet, in my view, has not earned the wholesale condemnation and rage that has been directed at him by Romanoff’s noisy supporters. This is not a just war.

So why is it happening? Dan Balz writes in the Washington Post today,

Colorado Democrats Bennet and Romanoff wage nasty, personal Senate battle

Internal party battles have been a hallmark mostly of Republican primaries this year. But for sheer nastiness and personal ill will, few of those can match what Democrats are doing in Colorado.

[…]

The contest has fast become a spectacle of negative ads and charges and counter-charges. Romanoff has been the aggressor. He has cast Bennet, a former investment banker, as a tool of Wall Street and a collector of campaign contributions from corporate interests. Bennet, once he engaged his opponent, accused him of falsehoods and hypocrisy.

[…]

Bennet was appointed to fill the vacancy created when Obama nominated then-Sen. Ken Salazar as interior secretary in his new Cabinet. Bennet was the surprise choice, having never run for office before. Romanoff, who had won high marks as Colorado speaker, was deeply disappointed that Gov. Bill Ritter passed him over for the job.

Myself, along with many other Democrats – and the campaign of Michael Bennet itself apparently – are all guilty of not anticipating the despicable turn this race has taken in the last month. I did not believe that Romanoff would mount such a sustained and vicious smear campaign (sorry, when the state’s main newspaper and every TV station in town says you’re lying, you’re lying). I didn’t fully understand how the Romanoff campaign was using surrogates, some paid, to promote attacks on Bennet in their official capacities. I didn’t realize that former officials like Jeanne Kaplan would wilfully misrepresent themselves to an unsuspecting news media, or that Andrea Merida would do so while taking checks from the Romanoff campaign. I didn’t think that AM760 would turn into a shameless nonstop electioneering forum for Romanoff. I’ve been reading Colorado Pols for several years, but I personally have never seen such a concerted effort to overrun this blog with propaganda for one candidate. Or failing that, to attack the blog itself.

And all for a candidate who has no significant ideological or policy differences with the incumbent he is trying to destroy.

But now I do understand. And at long last the Bennet campaign understands. I believe that Michael Bennet will emerge the narrow victor on Tuesday, and that the party will rally to him as the stark choice over either Republican candidate. When that happens, I want it known that Bennet waged the more ethical, more honest campaign of these two men. Bennet was forced, and perhaps waited too long, to respond to the relentless attacks by Romanoff. But even then Bennet also tried to rise above the smears with positive messages, and at no point did Bennet’s campaign ever engage in the underhanded tactics and abuse of office that Romanoff’s campaign did.

Including but not limited to these reasons, I am very, very proud to have supported Michael Bennet.