May 09, 2008 10:28 PM UTC

Wadhams Goes (Seriously) Crazy

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• by: Colorado Pols

Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams is really mad that he can’t get the press to do his bidding, so he’s resorted to bullying and threats in hopes of getting the media to pretend his candidate for Senate, Bob Schaffer, doesn’t have any warts at all. Wadhams and Schaffer shamelessly attacked and belittled a blog reporter a few weeks ago, and Wadhams just recently did the same thing to a reporter for The Grand Junction Sentinel.

As the editor of The Grand Junction Sentinel writes in his blog:

Newspaper editors and political reporters don’t need a calendar to tell them that it’s an even-numbered year. Even-numbered years are election years. We can tell that because those are the years when we get complaints from politicians and their handlers. It’s as predictable as Rick Wagner staking out a position to the right of just about everybody else.

We got a couple this week, and I think they are instructive. One was nothing more than a political handler trying to bully a reporter, the other a legitimate question about why we failed to do something. One was ugly, the other a genuine discussion between people who saw the same thing differently.

First the ugly.

Early in the week Democratic Senate candidate Mark Udall proposed the government quit stockpiling gas in the strategic petroleum reserve.

Reporter Mike Saccone, as any good reporter would do, called Udall’s opponent to get a response. Republican Bob Schaffer is very seldom available. He called Dick Wadhams, Schaffer’s campaign manager. I don’t think he ever even got to tell Wadhams why he was calling. The minute Wadhams got on the phone he launched into Mike, telling him he was a biased reporter, that he’s taken cheap shots at Schaffer and asking when we were going to do the same thing to Udall. I listened to the tape of the conversation. Mike seldom got to complete a question. Every time he tried Wadhams interrupted with yet another complaint about Mike and/or our coverage. He did manage to ask Wadhams for specific instances of biased reporting or cheap shots and Wadhams provided none.

The exchange was amusing. I don’t know what Wadhams was trying to accomplish other than to try to get our reporter to go easier on his candidate in future stories. Whatever it was it will have no effect whatsoever on how we cover the Senate race. We’ll continue to cover it as completely and fairly as possible.

This has always been a part of Wadhams’ repertoire – to attack reporters either directly or through a surrogate in attempts to shame them into reporting more on his opponent than on his own candidate. It worked well when he did it through the use of bloggers in the 2004 South Dakota defeat of Tom Daschle, but it doesn’t appear to be working in Colorado, where conservative blogs don’t really have the reach or the respectability that they may have had in other states.

There’s a fine line between strategy and flat-out rude bullying, and Wadhams has definitely crossed that line. Here’s hoping reporters around the state don’t fall into the trap of Wadhams’ intentional belittling and end up turning over their lunch money to him.