April 16, 2010 12:53 AM UTC

In Case You Hadn't Seen This Horrible Story Already

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• by: Colorado Pols

Today has not been a good news day for the Senate campaign of Democrat Andrew Romanoff. The Photoshopstroturfing story that first came out last night has gone national, and both the initial error and the subsequent “those minority folks” quote from new spokesperson Roy Teicher.

So what does Romanoff’s campaign do in response?

EXACTLY what you don’t do: Bring it all up again.

Romanoff’s campaign just committed the cardinal sin of self-inflicted wound repair: Calling more attention to the story that has caused you so much trouble already. This statement was released this afternoon:

Desperate Campaigns Make Desperate Decisions

The following statement was released today by Romanoff for Colorado campaign manager Bill Romjue:

Last month, the opposition accused Andrew of conspiring with Republicans to kill health care reform.  The reason?  Andrew pushed for a public option.

Last weekend, our opponent’s surrogates told delegates to support their candidate because he is married.  The argument drew boos in at least one county assembly, which flipped its support to Andrew.

Today, a new and especially despicable charge emerged.  A columnist accused our campaign of manipulating a photo in order to diversify the crowd at our kick-off rally last fall.

The truth: A designer collected photos taken at the rally and pasted them together in a collage at the top of our website.  Every individual pictured was at the event – a fact the columnist neglected to note.  Neither the columnist nor the newspaper pointed out that our opponent had done precisely the same thing in his own brochure.

This entire episode is a sad distraction from the issues that matter to so many hard-working Coloradans – like why America is losing jobs.  That’s the topic Andrew was addressing yesterday, during a tour of a manufacturing plant in Colorado Springs.  You can read his proposals for reforming our nation’s trade policy by clicking here.

Andrew Romanoff provides real solutions to real problems. That has been and will continue to be the focus of his campaign and his career.

Folks, if we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times. The “follow-up” is always worse than the “crime.”

Yes, today’s media reports really sucked. But the last thing in the world you want to do is to keep talking about it. There were certainly reporters and editors who were not aware of this story…and you just told them about it.

In every campaign something bad is bound to happen. The difference is in how the campaigns respond to those problems. The smart response here, which we’ve always advocated in similar situations, was to just shut up, take your lumps, and look forward to tomorrow. There is nothing you can say that is really going to make this better, so just leave it alone.

Issuing a statement was bad enough, but the Romanoff campaign took it one step further by blaming Denver Post columnist Susan Greene.

These are two pretty well-known rules in politics:

#1, Don’t throw gasoline on your own fire.

#2, Don’t pick fights with reporters or editors or other media members who can crush you repeatedly, any time they want. Remember the old adage about not starting fights with someone who buys ink by the barrel?

Ordinarily, 2-for-2 would be a good day. But not here.