August 04, 2010 11:22 PM UTC

Perlmutter: Questions About Connection Between Bennet's PAC Money & Votes Are Fair

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• by: davidsirota

On the AM760 morning show today, I interviewed Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter about the state of Colorado politics. In our discussion about the Senate Democratic primary, I asked Perlmutter whether he believed the questions about the connection between Sen. Michael Bennet’s (D) massive corporate PAC fundraising and Sen. Bennet’s votes on key issues were legitimate and fair. Perlmutter, who had previously endorsed Bennet, twice said he believed such questions were entirely fair. You can listen to the interview here (the relevant section starts at about 36:30 in).

This is a pretty interesting statement from Perlmutter, considering he is one of the biggest Colorado Democratic Party powerbrokers to have previously endorsed Bennet, and considering that the Bennet campaign has said such questions about money and votes are not acceptable and/or are overly “negative.” Indeed, Bennet has bridled at questions about whether the Wall Street money he has taken had anything to do with his vote-switching on credit card reform and vote against cramdown, and whether the oil/gas money he has taken had anything to do with him being one of the handful of Democrats to vote against eliminating massive tax breaks to the oil and gas industry.

If even Sen. Bennet’s key Democratic Party surrogates and supporters say such questions are entirely fair, how can he argue that they are somehow off limits?