April 08, 2012 04:53 AM UTC

"Cagey" Cory Gardner Strikes Again!

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• by: Colorado Pols

Fascinating stuff from FOX 31’s Eli Stokols late yesterday:

Republican Congressman Cory Gardner, elected in 2010 and widely viewed as a rising star within the GOP, has drawn the ire of Mitt Romney’s campaign over his reluctance to formally endorse the party’s likely presidential nominee.

FOX 31 Denver has obtained an email between two top Romney staffers who call Gardner’s refusal to endorse Romney ‘disappointing.’

The email is written by Rich Beeson, a Colorado native and Romney’s national political director, to Mason Fink, the campaign’s national finance director.

In the email, sent on Jan. 14 with ‘Disappointing’ in the subject line, Beeson writes:

“Cory Gardner (CO-4) committed to endorse Gov. Romney and then backed away because he was scared of getting in a primary. This is very disappointing. He committed to endorse and is now ‘scared’.” [Pols emphasis]

We’ll start by agreeing it’s perfectly understandable why freshman Rep. Cory Gardner was “scared” in January of this year of endorsing Mitt Romney–after all, Rick Santorum was setting up to win the Republican caucuses here just a few weeks later. But it’s fascinating to us that this apparent internal Romney campaign email was leaked at all. It doesn’t serve any purpose for Romney we can think of to disclose that a Republican congressman who had received campaign contribution love from Romney’s connected interests was “scared” about publicly supporting him–certainly not now, when Romney wants all memory of the primary to go away.

If Gardner’s camp leaked it, that could be an interesting story all by itself. Like we say, indecision during a heated primary isn’t unusual, but leaks about it well after the fact, when the candidate in question, now victorious, is supposed to be consolidating support…are unusual.

Eli Stokols does make one big mistake in this story, reporting that Rep. Mike Coffman “has also not yet endorsed Romney or any other GOP presidential contender.” Which isn’t right, Coffman was in fact the state chairman of Rick Perry’s presidential campaign.

That’s a simple enough way to show why Gardner is cagey about these things right there.