July 10, 2010 07:14 PM UTC

Jane Norton: Drill Baby Drill, Dictators Bad...Oops!

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• by: Colorado Pols

First, the good news: visitors to the homepage of GOP Senate candidate Jane Norton are no longer visually assaulted with her “war on Islam” web video and “stand with me against the liberals and terrorists” petition. You can still get to it, scroll to the bottom and click the little GI Joe helmet.

As of yesterday, Norton’s homepage sports a new theme:

And as before, here’s the video accompanying the new homepage:

You’ll be relieved to see that no major world religions were insulted in the making of this video. No, Norton is making a pretty standard claim from Republicans, one not entirely without merit although you have to wonder if the Gulf oil spill makes “Drill the Roan and ANWR” a bit of a sour prescription–and hell, even “Big Oil Bob” Schaffer at least had a token bullet point for wind power. Still, it’s not false for Norton to say that domestic energy reduces our dependency on various nasty despots around the world. In this ad, Norton highlights Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia.

Wait a minute. Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal…of Saudi Arabia?

Only occasionally in this campaign has the role of Norton’s brother-in-law, legendary D.C. lobbyist Charlie Black come up. The Colorado Statesman asked about Black in a recent interview:

CS: What has been the role of Charlie Black in your campaign?

JN: He’s been my brother-in-law (laughs).

CS: Right, and in terms of the campaign, what is his involvement?

JN: Oh, I called him from time to time and asked for advice.

CS: Does he still provide ongoing advice to you?

JN: Sure.

It would be interesting to know whether or not Norton ran this “foreign dictators bad” campaign theme by Charlie Black. It’s possible that going down this road might make him a little uncomfortable–just to refresh everyone’s memory, the New York Times reported in 2008:

A courtly Southerner, Mr. Black is an unflappable spinner, responding in the heat or silliness of a campaign with the well-modulated tone of a man who cannot believe that not everyone would see his position as the only reasonable one.

Blackwater, he says over steak salad at the Morton’s off the K Street lobbying corridor, “is a fine company that’s provided a great service to the people of the United States and Iraq.” Saudi Arabia, another client: “a great ally.” [Pols emphasis] Mr. Savimbi, the brutal Angolan leader whom President Ronald Reagan promoted as a freedom fighter but many Democrats derided as an ally of apartheid South Africa: “a great pleasure to work with.”

So while you’re waiting for a reporter to ask Norton whether she’s entirely comfortable with bashing one of her brother-in-laws’ clients (don’t hold your breath), here’s another twist–from the Huffington Post, also in 2008 while Black was working for John McCain’s presidential campaign:

In the summer of 2005…Charlie Black, working for his firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey, was paid $60,000 to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of the Chinese oil conglomerate CNOOC. At the time, CNOOC was mounting an aggressive bid to buy Unocal, a California-based oil giant, and Black was tasked with churning up congressional support. But the bid ultimately fell through, in part because of objections over the China oil industry’s ties to Iran… [Pols emphasis]

For those of you keeping score, that’s Jane Norton’s brother-in-law Charlie Black, who lobbied for one of the bad guys in this ad, Saudi Arabia, and lobbied for a foreign oil company in its bid to take over an “American Energy” company–a foreign oil company with ties to a second bad guy from this ad, Iran. We didn’t find much connecting Black with Venezuela, looks like most of the good lobbying contracts were in neighboring Colombia.

But it’s awfully hard to watch this ad, knowing the full story, and retain a straight face.

Norton has occupied so much of our attention in this campaign by trying to out-radical her GOP primary opponents, most recently agreeing with Tom Tancredo that Barack Obama represents a “greater threat” to America than the Nazis or nuclear annihilation. Those kinds of spectacles, seemingly one after another as Norton has fought desperately to appease the GOP base, have left very little oxygen in the room for all the things Democrats thought they would be talking about–at the top of that list being the outsize number of of high-level lobbyists in Norton’s immediate family. Well, it’s possible that by calling out so much of her own brother-in-law’s business, Norton has provided the perfect segue into that discussion all by herself.

More commentary here.