August 29, 2010 05:59 PM UTC

Not So "Uninvited" After All

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• by: Colorado Pols

We promoted a diary on Thursday night, from one of our readers who attended a debt repayment fundraiser for ex-Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff. This diary described the mood in the crowd (from the author’s perspective) as GOP Senate candidate Ken Buck “crashed” Romanoff’s fundraiser–corroborated by reporter Allison Sherry in the Denver newspaper, both accounts paint a picture of an unwelcome Buck who was rapidly cornered by Romanoff supporters over various positions he took during the primary, and who Romanoff’s own deputy campaign manager told Sherry very explicitly had not been invited. Berrick Abramson even took it a step further and asserted he would have told Buck not to come if he’d known Buck had planned to.

If these two reports on the crowd’s reaction to Buck are to be believed, it probably didn’t go as well as he and his campaign staff were hoping. Buck’s campaign claims they got a few volunteers from Romanoff’s crowd and private pledges of support–there’s no way to verify that, of course, but there’s also really no way to disprove it.

But as for Buck “crashing” Romanoff’s fundraiser/birthday party? As much as it might upset Romanoff supporters who, based on these accounts, reacted angrily to Buck’s appearance to learn, the National Review Online, via Colorado Drudge, is gleefully circulating an audio recording of Romanoff’s cousin personally inviting Buck to attend. So claims by Romanoff’s campaign and supporters in attendance that Buck “crashed” this party are obviously, um, a little problematic.

So what does this mean? Well, it’s a nice daily news cycle pickup for Ken Buck. The assertion by the Romanoff campaign that Buck was uninvited, coupled with what was reported as a hostile reaction to his appearance, left Buck on the defensive–obviously, a warm invitation from someone so close to Romanoff personally is an affirmative defense against the charge of being uncouth. And it leaves the Bennet camp’s desired spin of a hostile reception for Buck without a key aggravator. We wouldn’t call it a huge deal, but every campaign hopes to come out on top with these sorts of one-or-two-news-cycle spin scrums, and Buck undeniably did here.

But you can’t blame Allison Sherry for reporting what she was told in no uncertain terms by the Romanoff campaign, any more than you can blame the author of the diary we promoted Thursday. We seriously doubt that anyone from the Romanoff campaign was telling angry attendees that Buck had been invited, any more than they were willing to say so to the Denver newspaper. This would seem to lend credence to the idea that Romanoff’s supporters were in fact nonplussed by Buck’s appearance as reported–and Romanoff’s campaign didn’t want to take the fall.

Romanoff, for leaving the door wide open to Buck turning his “sympathy for the loser” event into a spin zone, is solely to blame. If you’re a Democrat, this should be the moment when you realize once and for all that this man has no political sensibility about him whatsoever. Here is the man who is given shared credit for recapturing the state legislature from the GOP in 2004. This makes him look like a safe-district idiot, entirely clueless of the broader effects of his actions.

The only other possibility is that he is indeed not clueless, and that would be much worse.

Which brings to mind Pat Caddell, disparaging health care reform, attacking Mark Udall’s credit card reforms, and lots of other politically ‘clueless’ moments. Perhaps this is Romanoff’s last.

Remember, this isn’t about the 46% of Democrats who voted for Romanoff, this is about Romanoff. If anything, most of those 46% would have been with those who gave Buck a hostile reception, and like those who did so, would be feeling pretty much backstabbed today.