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December 29, 2010 09:56 PM UTC

Top Non-Stories of 2010

  • 42 Comments
  • by: redstateblues

Every year in politics there are big news stories that drive places like this blog, the newspaper(s) (They Who Must Not Be Named) and the television news reports. At the same time, there are also stories that these media/new-media outlets severely blow out of proportion. The following is my list of the biggest (or dumbest, depending on your perspective) non-stories that were treated as big stories by the media and the chattering class. These can be stories that either didn’t materialize the way observers were hoping, or were the lead candidates for silliest of the silly season.

List follows below the fold. Feel free to add any that I couldn’t remember in the comments section, or to chime in with your thoughts on the ones I listed.

#5 Dan Maes Picks Tambor Williams As Running Mate

Back when there was still a shot in the dark that Dan Maes would have the support of the Republican Party establishment and the Tea Partiers who got him the GOP nomination, there was a lot of chattering from the chattering class about Maes’ decision to pick an old guard establishment Republican as his candidate for Lieutenant Governor. Much of the gestation of this story was, of course, cut short by Dan Maes’ own a-Maes-ing candidacy, but when this was suggested to me as a potential top non-story I had to pause to go “Oh right, Tambor Williams was Maes’ pick.” Now that is a non-story.

#4 “Democrats Are All Goners For Sure in 2010”

It’s possible that this would have materialized as a real story in 2010 had it not been for the meltdown in the GOP gubernatorial race, and a slim margin of victory for Michael Bennet, or if the Democrats had not been able to keep their State Senate majority intact. However, all of those things ended up happening and Democrats were able to turn November 2nd into a mixed bag, or even a victory on the top two lines of the ballot. The bigger story, in fact, ended up being the Republicans going all-in on buying the headline, and maybe not working as hard on the ground as they could have.

#3a Romanoff’s Caucus Night and State Assembly Victories

It’s probably expected that from what I would argue was the biggest story for most of 2010–the Democratic US Senate Primary–come three of my top non-stories of 2010. Despite predictions a year out that Andrew Romanoff would likely do well at caucus and assembly voting, but fall short when the time came for the primary election, his campaign for US Senate treated those two victories as though they were much more meaningful than they actually were–of course, the Bennet camp delved into silly spinning as well by sending out press releases saying that their losses at caucus and assembly were really victories too. Though Romanoff’s wins were certainly good for boosting the morale of a campaign that had been dealing with far too much damage control up until that point, they became somewhat illusory for the campaign. In campaign e-mails, Bill Romjue kept referring back to their support being “doubled” when in fact it was pretty much staying the same. The real race was always about August, and those two events distracted the Romanoff campaign from the big picture.

#3b The Bennet/Norton/Stapleton campaigns petition onto the ballot

All of the opponents of the people mentioned above  tried desperately to create a story out of this non-story. Romanoff, Buck, and Ament all accused their opponents of trying to buy their grassroots support by paying staff and canvassers to get enough signatures to put their names on the ballot–rather than rely on the support of activists at their respective State Assemblies. Did it matter? Nope. Bennet and Stapleton won, and Norton lost–presumably for other reasons (Hint: it starts with Referendum C.)

#2 Andrea Merida Recall Campaign

The campaign to recall Andrea Merida was a story that was born out of the Democratic US Senate primary. Merida, an ardent Romanoff supporter who was paid for her work on Romanoff’s campaign, won election to the Denver School Board–an entity which would often vote along the lines of political leanings in that primary election. Merida was almost immediately challenged by former State House candidate Jose Silva as being worthy of a recall election. Silva, somewhat ironically as we would later see, accused Merida of “unethical conduct” and “unbecoming behavior” in his petition for a recall election. As our own Middle of the Road would show in a well-researched diary on Silva in early October, Silva had his own history of unpaid campaign debt, and failure to file even a single campaign contribution report to the Secretary of State’s office. The recall effort fizzled out, as well it should have.

#1 Romanoff Photoshopgate

What happened: a woman who was at a different Romanoff rally was cropped into a logo so that the space between last “F” in the logo and Romanoff’s face was not the back of the head of the woman in the original picture. This was reported on by Lynn Bartels and Susan Greene (who suggested that the Romanoff campaign had done the editing to make Romanoff’s rallies look more racially diverse. Follow the link to the Colorado Independent link for the full story on this in case you don’t remember or weren’t paying attention) and of course prompted Roy Teicher’s now infamous “…these minority folks” line.

What the result was: Like so many other campaign derailments, it was the Romanoff campaign’s handling of the non-story that actually turned into the bigger story. This is the number one non-story of 2010 because it was, at its essence, a whopper of a non-story. However, it ended up completely distracting the Romanoff campaign, and they repeated the mistake over and over again during the course of the primary.

Comments

42 thoughts on “Top Non-Stories of 2010

    1. He should have run for Governor. He’d be the Gov elect if he had. It was Gov.Ritter that he was puportedly angry  with and that’s the person that he shuld have adreessed his ire towards.

      Calling every politician that takes PAC money corrupt didn’t help.

      The fact of the matter is that his campaign was so negative that several people, some prominent, that planned on voting for him in the primary did not do so. The negativity took him down.  

      1. I’m not going to rehash our primary fight. My comment was intended to be read as humorous, that’s why I put the little smiley face so everyone would know that.

              1. Even under the best of circumstances, I don’t think Romanoff would have had a cakewalk. On the other hand, if he’d been the nominee he probably would have taken better advantage of the Tancredo/Maes situation and not let the race get so close.

            1. “Jane, you ignorant slut…”

              I’d like to see a mud wrestling matchup between Ray and John Kennedy to settle this for once and for all.

              Okay, maybe just arm wrestling.

              Hmmm… maybe not that either.

              Give it a rest, boys!  The election is over.  Water under the bridge.  What’s done is done.  Any further fretting or pouting about it doesn’t change the results.  We already had the Airing of Grievances.

              Thank God, Buddha, Bubba, Barbie, or Bacon (the food, not the actor, unless you prefer the actor over the food… then by all means feel free to worship at the altar of Kevin, but that would be weird)… or whatever higher power suits your fancy that Ken Buck is not our senator.  Lets leave it at that.

              1. I was just thinking yesterday of that old game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. I am really thinking that about now, FaceBook should be able to answer that age-old question of how closely we really are all related.

                I asked LinkedIn once to generate the ability to look into our friends queue for 2nd degree separations because it always seemed to me that friends of friends of friends were where we were most likely to find other friends. They said they’d think about it.

                Maybe David is already doing this? David?

                1. has always weirded me out a little bit.

                  People I met on dive trips like 7 years ago have shown up in my “people you may know” list.  It’s usually that person the rest of the dive group wanted to stab in the leg to offer up as shark bait for photo ops.  For many of them, there is no common connection.  I cut Linkedin off from my e-mail address book ages ago.  Maybe my e-mail is in their address book.  It’s still creepy.

  1. Assembly victories by Maes, Buck and Romanoff certainly brought out the passionate wings of both parties.

    But either the candidate (Maes) or campaign (Buck, Romanoff) fell short of their initial promise.

    In a purple state, do the fringe members’ obvious passion and hard work do more good, or more damage to the respective parties for the general election?

    What is a better way to recruit and vet candidates, and ensure fully-formed discussions over policy, principles and methods of governing so voters don’t get a January surprise?

    1. And yes, I think that assemblies (and the precinct caucus meetings that precede them) are relatively useless. They’re a fun way for the parties to vote, but ultimately the nominations are left up to a much fairer, more Democratic way to select candidates–albeit with less of a party atmosphere.

      1. Caucus and assembly is such a burden on the parties, physically, logistically and especially financially, I see no fun in them.

        I view Colorado’s process as entirely too cumbersome (both on attendees and candidates) and strongly support an all-petition process for primary ballot placement.

            1. by people quitting their jobs without fulfilling their sworn terms. Caucus and assemblies are just vacancy committees on a grandiose scale, but without the power.

              We should have a primary in the spring, not a caucus, an assembly, and THEN a primary. It’s ludicrous.

              1. candidates, with the vacancy committee selection of a replacement officeholder.  

                My point is, there is a purpose to the caucus and assembly process, beyond just the selection of candidates.  It is to assist with party organization at the precinct, county, district and state levels – to organize and motivate those who are most likely to do the work of a party and of candidates.  Perhaps we can dump the caucus/assembly process, and just have candidate (or vacancy) committees do all the work.  We’re told parties are less important all the time anyway. . .

                1. I’m just saying that they’re not really comparable.

                  You’re right that they’re not pointless, but why do they have to be used to select candidates when the primary really does all that anyway? The most cumbersome aspect of the entire caucus/assembly process, the part you mentioned, is the part that only the most hardcore partisans take part in.

          1. There is so much business that has to get done at caucus, they really are not effective to use for recruiting.

            Recruiting should be done in an atmosphere where that is the main goal. Then maybe more committed PCPs could be found.  

            1. Although we’ve had some success drawing some new people in who were keepers in   non-presidential years with low turn out. 2008 was just barely controlled chaos. But definitely not the most effective way.  HD Chairs always have to get after it post elections.

      2. As a Bennet caucus volunteer, I knew Romanoff would win the caucus and assembly. What stunned me was the amount of support for Bennet which stayed at a steady 40% to 45%.

        I think that’s when I started to believe Bennet would win the primary in the fall, after State Assembly failed to deliver a knockout blow for the party insider. If Romanoff couldn’t pull off a better showing with his own base, there was no way he was going to pull it off with the average primary voter who wasn’t nearly as vested in his campaign.  

        1. That’s the only time any caucus/assembly results matter. Since it’s all about what order each candidate is on the ballot, and whether or not they’re on the ballot, the actual percentages mean jack shit.

          1. was Romanoff keeping Bennet under 30% at State. When he couldn’t pull that off, I started focusing on getting more involved for the general and took some time off from the primary race.

            And believe me, I’m a superstitious volunteer–I never assume my candidate is going to win because voters can do unexpected things on election day. It also motivates me to work harder when I assume my guy is behind until the bitter end. I was frankly stunned at the point spread of Bennet’s win over Romanoff on primary night. Stunned but not terribly surprised.  

        2. I knew going into caucus there would be a large, motivated Romanoff contingent there.  At our caucus site, there were an equal number of Bennet volunteers, more quietly but solidly working (as were Andrew’s folks).  Great GOTV by both candidates.

  2. We were supposed to be mad as hell about the government takeover of our health care system and would demand candidates who would fight for repeal.

    Certainly, the passage of Obamacare didn’t help Markey or Salazar in their red CD districts, but it would be a stretch to say that Gardner and Tipton won because they made the new healthcare legislation a central focus. Bennett won despite some very pointed ads run against him and his Senate votes. Caldera’s ballot initiative failed as well, with little advertising pro or con and even less introspection on part of the media as to why it went down.

    In the end, Obamacare never got off the sidelines as a defining political issue.

    1. As a self employed person buying my own insurance (not for much longer as it keeps getting more unaffordable and will probably continue to do so for years) I haven’t seen any government take over. Just the same old same old.  And to add insult to injury guess how old our son was when keeping kids on until 26 kicked in.  Right…27 and with a job that doesn’t offer health insurance.  

  3. Good list here, RSB. Here’s a few more that might qualify:

    The Smoking Gun That Wasn’t

    John Suthers was in trouble! He released a serial killer into the state and didn’t even remember doing it! Despite some dogged reporting and his opponent’s ads, voters deemed this a non-story.

    Tancredo Might Win

    Once the Republicans figured out whether they were throwing Maes under the bus and then backing up over him, or just throwing him under, polls started showing Tancredo with a real shot at winning. Even Tancredo believed he might ride the wave into the most improbable victory in recent Colorado history. But alas, this was all bluster and headlines and turned out not to be a story.

    Fallon Nipping at DeGette’s Heels

    Hey, in a Tea Party year, anything can happen, right? Wrong.

    Beauprez in Shining Armor



    Ol’ Bob’s name surfaced just about every time there was a soft spot on the Republican ticket this cycle, and that was a number of times. Would he jump in for senator after Suthers said no thanks? Might he save the day and take the place of Maes on the ballot? Or did he just have a book to promote and liked seeing his name in the papers?

    Bennet Fleeces DPS?

    This was going to be the silver bullet that took down the accidental senator. Credit default swaps that wound up costing …. well, it wasn’t really clear whether they were costing DPS more than expected or not, depending on the time-frame, and besides, only a couple reporters and a handful of very angry bloggers even pretended to understand this story. The Romanoff campaign thought this was the perfect closing argument against Bennet, but the Republicans thought differently, only using the “scandal” minimally in general election ads.

    David Chestnutgate

    A right-wing blogger with LOTS of time on his hands supports Ken Buck by creating a fake persona and scribbling away on Facebook about how badly the Democrats have let him down. This kind of childish bullshit caused major embarrassment and big problems for campaigns in years past, but this year the perpetrator was such a bit player it only provoked pity.

    1. But I think they were a real story, and not a non-story. You’re right that they would have destroyed the state, and that’s the reason they became a story–60, 61, 101 were the one thing on the ballot that had wide bipartisan agreement. You had Josh Penry and Brandon Shaffer both standing up in opposition to them at a debate at DU during the election. That kind of bipartisanship was hard to come by in what was a very contentious and acrimonious cycle.

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