February 21, 2008 09:20 PM UTC

Crank's Ambush Politics

• 5 Comments
• by: seeshore

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Ambush Politics

February 20, 2008

Before we really get to the meat of this essay, we will share part of a dinner conversation we had with several bloggers last week, including Ross, who is a strong Jeff Crank supporter.  Ross likely repeated the comments we made, and was free to do so because unlike other comments that night, we didn’t ask him and others not to repeat them.

We said something to the order of “We are neutral in the Presidential and the 5th CD races because we intend to do our best to suppress the sore loser syndrome after the primary.”  We couldn’t do that if we appeared to take sides before the primary.”

Ross already knew that we were trying to keep the 5th CD primary from getting ugly even before the primary.  

What follows is about doing just that.

Yesterday, when we read the Gazette article about Doug Lamborn supposedly ducking out on a scheduled debate, the facts as presented had an odor of ambush about them.  We didn’t even have to read far between the lines to smell it.

It is one thing to schedule a debate after all candidates have agreed to it, but when one candidate doesn’t agree, then it can’t be called a debate.  In fact, it is dirty politics for anyone involved to call an event a debate if it isn’t agreed that it is to be a debate to by all sides.

Yesterday afternoon, we began doing some digging.  We first discovered that Jeff Crank had been advertising the event to the press as a “5th Congressional District Forum between the three candidates” since Feb 8th.  That makes it sound like a debate.

When we contacted the Doug Lamborn press officer (bloggers can’t talk to just any staffer-we are considered press), we got the following two statements:

The Congressman attended the El Paso County Republican Women’s meeting yesterday to give a brief update on the issues and events going on in Washington DC.  There was some miscommunication between the campaign manager and the event’s organizer, but that was cleared up last week.  The Congressman is more than willing to debate the issues once the ballot is set. The campaign has communicated this to other organizations.  Therefore, we could not make an exception here.  At no point had the Congressman agreed to a debate on this occasion.  If there was any assumption that he had agreed to be a debate it would have been a misunderstanding.

That sounds as though Doug Lamborn never agreed that he would be appearing in a debate format, but just to be sure, we asked the question again in a different way and got this answer:

The Congressman never agreed to any sort of debate.  He was only there to give a legislative update on the goings on in Washington.

It is legitimate for an organization to set up a debate, invite the participants and put up an empty chair for those who do not attend.  

It is not legitimate for an organization to misrepresent the kind of event that the candidate has agreed to attend and then allow the other candidates to attack him in the press when he does what he has agreed to do, even if that wasn’t what the sponsors and the other candidates would have preferred.

Jeff Crank’s consultant gave away the game when he said to the Gazette:

“He thought he was going to be the lone speaker,” said Patrick Davis, a consultant working for the Crank campaign, who attended the forum at the Valley Hi Golf Course.

“He said, ‘There must have been a mix-up. I’m not here to debate these two gentlemen,'” Davis recounted.

That makes it sound like the organization and the other two candidates were playing ambush politics.  This is most curious as both candidates claim that the reason they are in the race is because Lamborn let his allies play dirty in 2006.  If they are going to try to set high standards for Lamborn, they need to meet those standards themselves, and this kind of tactic doesn’t do it.

We’re confident that Greg Garcia will be having another talk with all three campaigns, this time about how debates are to be scheduled and how participation is to be confirmed.  

Perhaps the Gazette will check with him to see if all three candidates have agreed to a debate before again allowing two of them to misrepresent what happened.  Garcia is, after all, the self proclaimed fairness police in this election.  We’re just helping him do his job.

On a similar note, here is a timeline from the 2006 election:

Feb 15, 2006:  Hefley announces retirement

March 25, 2006: El Paso County Caucuses

April 1, 2006: Bentley Rayburn moves to the 5th CD

April 15, 2006:  El Paso County Assembly

Lamborn is correct that it is too soon to start debating since the ballot hasn’t even been formed yet.  This time last election cycle Rayburn didn’t even live in the district!