December 21, 2007 03:20 AM UTC

Phase Line Responds, But Doesn't Help

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• by: Colorado Pols

It hasn’t been a good couple of days for Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman, and things aren’t getting much better after the Rocky Mountain News interviewed Phase Line Strategies President Sean Tonner:

The president of a political consulting firm said today there’s no connection between his involvement in Secretary of State Mike Coffman’s congressional race, and Coffman’s favorable decision for one of his clients, a voting machine manufacturer.

Sean Tonner, the president of Phase Line Strategies, said Premier Election Solutions hired his firm in August.

“When Premier came to us, everybody thought Tom Tancredo was going to run in 2010,” Tonner said.

Congressman Tancredo, a Littleton Republican, announced in October he wouldn’t seek another term. That’s when Coffman announced he would seek the GOP nomination in the 6th Congressional District.

That may be “officially” true, but that excuse doesn’t hold a drop of water. Tom Wiens, Ted Harvey and plenty of other Republicans had long expected Tancredo to depart, and Coffman surely was looking at this race long before Tancredo’s “official” announcement. As we discussed here back in January, it was an open secret for months that Tancredo was unlikely to run for re-election.

But wait, there’s more…

Tonner is serving as Coffman’s pro bono campaign spokesman, but he said his company has not been hired to work on the campaign. Tonner said Coffman misspoke when he said he had hired Phase Line.

“Mike and I go back over 10 years. We were both Gulf War veterans. I would charge any hill for him,” Tonner said.

“There’s nothing nefarious here.”

Tonner has served as Coffman’s spokesperson, and he officially announced Coffman’s intentions to run on the same day that Tancredo said he would not run again. Clearly this was being discussed long before Tancredo “officially” bowed out of the race.

We also find it a bit curious that Tonner would go out of his way to point out that Coffman hasn’t “officially” hired Phaseline to run his campaign. “Tonner said Coffman misspoke when he said he had hired Phase Line.” Seriously? Coffman accidentally said that he hired a consultant that he hadn’t actually hired? Come on now – you’ve got to come up with something better than that.

The truth, in fact, will be tough to hide. By all indications Coffman HAS hired Phase Line and said it himself. If Tonner is telling the truth, he should still show up on the report as an in-kind contributor. If Tonner isn’t telling the truth, then somebody is going to have to be cooking some serious books in the next couple of weeks. The mid-January FEC report will be very interesting.

Interestingly enough, the News also reports that Phase Line has already lost one client because of this:

Premier on Wednesday terminated its contract with Phase Line after questioning from the Rocky Mountain News.