October 03, 2006 05:27 PM UTC

Rocky Mountain News Investigates Illegal Coordination

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• by: Colorado Pols

From today’s Rocky Mountain News:

Did ammunition in an attack ad against Democrat Bill Ritter by Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez’s campaign come from an independent political group prohibited from coordinating with the Beauprez campaign?

The question was raised Monday when the Rocky Mountain News learned that information about former Denver District Attorney Ritter’s plea bargains with immigrant defendants, which wound up in the Beauprez ad, came from an attorney that also represents the Trailhead Group, a Republican organization barred by state and federal law from working in concert with candidate campaigns.

Beauprez’s campaign, the Trailhead Group and the attorney, John Zakhem, denied any illegal coordination occurred between the candidate’s camp and Trailhead, a so- called 527 group, named for the Internal Revenue Service code under which such independent groups, which can raise unlimited amounts of money, fall.

Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer wasn’t buying it. “This is, I think, a clear and convincing example of the Beauprez campaign illegally coordinating with a 527 group,” said Dreyer…

…This much is known: Trailhead Executive Director Alan Philp acknowledged hiring a Philadelphia researcher, John Wasilchick, to investigate Ritter’s record on allowing legal and illegal immigrant defendants to plead guilty to trespass on agricultural land with intent to commit a crime, rather than to their original crimes, for which they could be deported.

Trailhead, which has run repeated ads accusing Ritter of being soft on crime, has paid Wasilchick $19,824 for his work this campaign season, according to IRS records.

Public records show that Wasilchick requested computer data on Ritter’s farmland trespass convictions from the state court administrator’s office on Sept. 7. Last week, the Ritter campaign, a reporter and the Denver DA’s office requested the same data from the state court administrator, but no such request was made by the Beauprez campaign.