Posts about personhood

We haven’t been the only ones confused by Democrat Andrew Romanoff’s complete lack of messaging as to why he was running against Sen. Michael Bennet. From day one, Romanoff has been unable to articulate just what he would do differently if you voted for him instead of Bennet, which has always struck us as a remarkably strange deficiency. “What’s your message?” is kind of the first or second question you need to ask yourself when you decide to run for office. If you can’t answer that question, well, then you should probably re-evaluate your whole plan.

But while we’ve been critical of the fact that Romanoff spent the first several months of his campaign completely sans message, we can also acknowledge the fact that he has finally started to figure it out. This doesn’t exactly differentiate Romanoff from Bennet, but at least Romanoff is finally starting to say what he would do if elected. From an email sent to supporters today:

Speaking in Pueblo today to more than 100 people from Pueblo and Fremont counties, U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff called on Congress to solve America’s health care crisis, save money and save lives.

“If I were in the U.S. Senate today, I’d fight to take the pork out, put the public option back in and remove the health insurance industry’s antitrust exemption,” Romanoff said. “Congress should put an end to its backroom deals and pay-to-play politics and put the health of Americans first.”

Gee, that was easy. It was expensive, apparently, but it was easy. If Romanoff had been doing this from the beginning of his campaign, things might look a lot different for him than they do today.

 

The campaign for Democrat Andrew Romanoff likes to say that he is the leading candidate for U.S. Senate according to independent polling results.

Except that he isn’t.

In mid-December, the Romanoff campaign sent out an email to supporters claiming that he was the favored candidate in a Rasmussen Reports poll from September. He was not.

Today, in an email from new Campaign Manager Bill Romjue, Romanoff’s campaign again claims that he outpolls Bennet in the most recent Rasmussen Reports poll. But he doesn’t. Check out this sample of the email sent today (full email appears after the jump):

Andrew Romanoff outperforms his primary opponent among voters of every political party, every age group, and every other demographic category. (Rasmussen Reports, Dec. 8, 2009)  Andrew has consistently earned the highest ratings since entering the race. [Pols emphasis] (Rasmussen, Sept. 15, 2009)

Not only has Romanoff not “consistently earned the highest ratings since entering the race,” we don’t know of any public poll showing that Romanoff leads anybody. That’s nothing to worry about, because it’s still early in the race, but it’s not okay to just lie about stuff that is easily verifiable.

Neither the December 8 Rasmussen Poll nor the September 15 Rasmussen poll show Romanoff leading Bennet. In both polls, Bennet outperforms Romanoff by a small margin against potential matchups with Republicans Jane Norton and Tom Wiens. Bennet doesn’t outperform Romanoff by much — and that is certainly a message they could exploit — but it just simply isn’t true to continue to say that Romanoff polls better than Bennet.

We’ve not been shy in expressing our confusion over the apparent lack of direction and message coming from the Romanoff camp (nor are we the only ones confused), but this is a different story altogether. Romanoff’s campaign has now sent two separate emails in the same month touting false information that anyone with an Internet connection can easily check themselves. It’s one thing to try to spin the results of a poll, but it’s another entirely to just flat-out lie, repeatedly, and expect that nobody will notice.

Coloradans want new leadership in the U.S. Senate.

Click here if you do, too.

That’s the clear conclusion of two recent polls on the Colorado Senate race.   (The surveys were not commissioned by any of the candidates.)  Voters would prefer a new senator by a margin of more than two to one. (Public Opinion Strategies, Dec. 12-15, 2009)

Andrew Romanoff outperforms his primary opponent among voters of every political party, every age group, and every other demographic category. (Rasmussen Reports, Dec. 8, 2009)  Andrew has consistently earned the highest ratings since entering the race. (Rasmussen, Sept. 15, 2009)

The fundraising quarter ends in 24 hours. Help put Andrew over the top.

Andrew is not only the most popular Democrat in the race; he’s also the most qualified.  No one has done more to turn our state around.  From winning the largest Democratic majority in nearly 50 years to tackling Colorado’s fiscal crisis, Andrew Romanoff has demonstrated enormous courage, vision and leadership.  Those are exactly the qualities we need in Washington today.

Someone has to stand up to the special-interest groups that run the Senate–and the members of both parties who let them.

Andrew Romanoff will.

In fact, he already has.  Andrew is the only candidate in this race to turn down contributions from corporate political action committees–the cash that so many big insurance companies, drugmakers and financial firms use to subsidize Congress and stifle reform.

Andrew Romanoff is leading by example.  That’s the only way real change ever comes.

Washington needs a wake-up call.  It’s time for us to deliver one.

Sincerely,

Bill Romjue

Campaign Manager

Romanoff for Colorado

Sorry to break it to you, anti-Romanoff conspiracy theorists, but we’re not the only ones wondering what the hell is going on with Andrew Romanoff’s Senate campaign. As Susan Greene writes in The Denver Post:

Andrew Romanoff promised a barn burner.

I’ve seen barn burning. This isn’t it.

The former state House speaker lacks ignition in his primary bid for the U.S. Senate. Three months into his candidacy, he’s is still without a voice, a campaign manager and a reason why Democrats should oust Michael Bennet from office.

“Where’s Andrew?” I’m asked at least once a week.

“Where’s Andrew?” I ask two of his advisers.

“In the bunker,” they say in campaign- speak that’s irksome not only to war veterans.

Romanoff’s bunker is an office suite on South Monaco Parkway where he’s hunkered down making fundraising calls and thinking about strategy.

“A lot of things we’ve been doing, it’s true, are sort of under the radar,” the candidate says.

Thing is, laying low doesn’t energize voters, especially in an insurgent campaign against a sitting senator.

And he has other problems.

Like money – that Romanoff has far less of it than Bennet.

And staffing woes. He has yet to hire a campaign manager after Sue Casey, a former Denver councilwoman, ended her stint in the job earlier this fall.

And a sorry lack of attendance at campaign rallies, often billed as “Coffees with Andrew Romanoff.” The candidate doesn’t even drink coffee, a beverage he says is “just an expression for me.” Ever the self-promoter, he says his low turnout encourages intimacy. “We packed the house in Trinidad last week,” he notes weakly.

“I think it’s safe to say most people haven’t tuned in yet,” adds the candidate who has given little reason to tune in.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Romanoff really has some brilliant strategy for winning this race that involves being virtually invisible. Maybe this really is all part of the plan.

But even if that were true, and we don’t think it is, Romanoff is really handicapping his own campaign because of the storyline that has been created. As we’ve said time and time again, perception is everything in politics, and Romanoff has created the perception — true or not — that his campaign is a complete mess. That kind of perception snowballs over time, because the more potential donors and supporters hear that his campaign is rudderless, the harder it becomes for Romanoff to reach them.

What’s the message? That there is no message.

And that’s not a good message.

(Bumped into Thursday by popular demand – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Politico takes a look at Democrat Andrew Romanoff and his challenge to Sen. Michael Bennet, coming to many of the same conclusions that we’d already reached:

Romanoff’s campaign is shaping up to be a far lower-profile — and less damaging — effort than Democrats anticipated. Three months after announcing his bid, Romanoff remains a distinctly under-the-radar candidate, picking up little media coverage and shying away from launching pointed barbs against his establishment opponent.

“I don’t think he’s been able to give an answer to the question, ‘Why are you running?'” said Floyd Ciruli, an independent Denver-based pollster. “It’s left the campaign without a clear constituency and without a clear message.”

Perhaps most surprising to state insiders, Romanoff has overseen a Senate campaign that is decidedly lacking in infrastructure. Sue Casey, a veteran party operative who ran Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 effort in the state, confirmed to POLITICO that she left Romanoff’s campaign in October – a departure that has left the campaign without a manager for the past several months…

…With Casey gone, sources familiar with the campaign say Romanoff has largely relied on a staff of informal advisers, including his cousin Melissa Caplan and Ken Gordon, a former Democratic leader in the state Legislature. Dave Hemrick and Tom McMahon, two veteran Washington-based Democratic strategists, have also been advising the campaign.

To Democrats in the state, Romanoff’s relative quietness in a contest many expected to be a barnburner has raised broader questions about whether he should have stepped into the race in the first place.

We first noted that Casey was out of the Romanoff campaign back in November, wondering who was driving and where they were headed. Some Romanoff supporters have jumped to his defense here on Colorado Pols, but we’ve just been calling it like we see it — despite the spin attempts.

“There’s no sense of momentum; there’s no sense anything is happening,” said another well-connected Democrat in the state. “I’m not sure anyone is running his campaign, quite frankly.”

In a statement to POLITICO, Romanoff spokesman John Schroyer said the team was “delighted with how the campaign is developing. The campaign staff continues to grow.” Schroyer noted that the campaign “has been endorsed by 200 elected leaders, has 900 volunteers … and has collected more than 2,600 contributions, with 95 percent of those from in-state donors.”

Look, this is what you are supposed to say when you are a campaign spokesperson — that you are “delighted with how the campaign is developing.” But no rational observer could look at this campaign and think everything is just swell.

The Politico article runs down basically the same issues and concerns that most Colorado political observers — including us — have had about Romanoff’s campaign. There’s no message, no clear direction, and not much to get excited about now that the potential of Romanoff as a candidate has given way to the reality.

The only part of the Politico article that we don’t agree with is Ciruli’s nonsense statement that a Romanoff victory in the caucus will make this a race; Romanoff is supposed to win the caucus because hardcore Democrats are more familiar with him. The real question is whether Romanoff’s campaign can make it that far.

We’ve been tough on Democrat Andrew Romanoff and his bizarre campaign for U.S. Senate, but we’re not saying anything that a lot of political observers aren’t.

Romanoff continues to be silent in terms of any sort of platform — hell, we haven’t even seen talking points — that mention what he believes in and why you should vote for him over incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet. While Bennet makes national headlines with his bold statement that he would risk losing his seat over his vote on health care reform, Romanoff says…nothing. About anything. (Well, except for talking about how he’s a leader and stuff, which is, in a word, pointless).

The criticism aimed at Romanoff’s campaign has largely been about the total absence of any position, yet inexplicably he keeps feeding the beast. Witness, if you will, an email sent today from the campaign with this headline” “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

We’d normally make a joke here, but this narrative has gone from amusing and ironic to confusing to just, well, just plain sad. A candidate criticized for not having a position on anything sends out an email with the headline “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” Are they trying to look silly?

Full text of said email below.

“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

I was reminded of that line today when I read about the GOP’s new Contract with Colorado, dubiously dubbed the “Platform for Prosperity.”  We should educate our workforce, rebuild our roads and bridges, and save for a rainy day, the platform says – but we don’t want to pay for it.

Click here to call their bluff.

This is not a new trick.  It’s one of the oldest in the political playbook: Promise the voters anything they want, and then hope that no one bothers to do the math before the election.

Such short-sighted schemes are one of the reasons our economy is ailing.  It’s the same sort of fact-free snake oil that so many seductive salesmen – from politicians to predatory lenders – have been peddling.  

Instant gratification, by definition, doesn’t last.  And the side effects can be devastating: ever-deepening debt, rising foreclosure rates, a crumbling infrastructure.

We can do better.  We can put an end to partisan gamesmanship.  We can demand leaders who solve problems rather than point fingers or pick fights – and we can hold those leaders accountable.

Principled leadership.  That’s what I’ve sought to provide for the past eight years, first as a state legislator and then as speaker of the House.  It’s what I’ll bring to the U.S. Senate.  The stakes we face are too high to settle – or fall – for anything less.

A few strange items from today’s Denver Post regarding fundraising numbers from the Senate races. In the period from Sept. 10-30, Sen. Michael Bennet outraised challenger Andrew Romanoff $364,000 to $181,000. But Romanoff’s spokesperson had an explanation. Sort of.

During those three weeks, Bennet raised twice as much as Romanoff, $364,000 to $181,000, among itemized individual donors giving $200 or more…

…Joelle Martinez, spokeswoman for Romanoff, said her candidate’s fundraising did not begin in earnest until the last 10 days of the month.

“I think we felt really good about what we were able to bring in during that 10-day period,” Martinez said.

We don’t believe for a second that Romanoff didn’t bother to really start raising money until the last 10 days of the month, because he certainly understands the importance of showing solid fundraising numbers. But as we’ve mentioned before in this space, we’re baffled that Romanoff has gotten off to such a plodding start in his campaign, particularly given this revelation:

His filing also showed he paid $27,500 out of his own pocket for a poll in March, six months before he announced his candidacy.

“It’s a big decision whether or not to run,” Martinez said. “That was one of the things he turned to as far as making a decision.”

So Romanoff had solid numbers on a potential matchup with Bennet in March, yet waited until September to bother lining up donors? Combine this lack of planning with the total absence of any message from Romanoff, and it’s getting harder to see where this campaign is really going.

We’ve questioned before the complete lack of any real message coming from Andrew Romanoff’s campaign for U.S. Senate. As the campaign enters its second full month, there is still no clear message from Romanoff.

Click below to read Romanoff’s latest email sent out to supporters. It’s filled with the same vacuous stuff that his previous emails have included. “Grassroots effort,” “Meaningful and lasting progress,” and our favorite, “Real reform requires risk.” It all sounds so very…vague. And that’s not going to get Romanoff elected.

And please, we offer a simple plea not just to Romanoff, but to hundreds of other candidates: Stop using the “Not trolling for dollars on Wall Street but talking to people on Main Street” line. It’s soooo played.  

“You gotta dance with them what brung ya.”

Most candidates for Congress spend the bulk of their time raising money from powerful interest groups – the same groups they’re expected to regulate once in office.  No wonder so many politicians are reluctant to rock the boat.  You can raise more money, and stay in office longer, by playing it safe.

That’s not acceptable, especially not now.  History has handed us a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make meaningful and lasting progress on a host of issues, from health care to the economy to the fate of the earth itself.  To make the most of this opportunity, we need bold leadership in the U.S. Senate.  Timidity won’t do the trick.  Real reform requires risk.

Click here to take action.

If we are serious about curbing health-care costs, for example, we’ll need to reform the ways in which we deliver and compensate care, so that providers are rewarded for improving outcomes, not simply for prescribing procedures and ordering tests.  If we are serious about securing a higher standard of living for ourselves and our children, we’ll need to retool our schools, retrain our workforce and rebuild our infrastructure, rather than rely on financial gimmicks and foreign debt.  If we are serious about safeguarding our environment, we’ll need nothing less than a revolution in the production and use of energy, so that we no longer have to spill our blood or spoil our skies just to power our planet.

Click here to make a difference.

None of these steps will be easy.  But few will even be possible unless we reform our political system.  Too many elections are foregone conclusions – contests in name only – or yard sales, in which public offices are auctioned off to the highest bidder.  The politicians who prevail pose little threat to the status quo; their victories are bought and paid for by an incumbent-protection racket that regards democracy as bad for business.

How do we break the grip of these plutocratic potentates and reclaim our democracy?  We restore the power of people.  That’s why I’m writing to you today.  We are building a broad, grassroots campaign, fueled by and focused on the people of Colorado.  I’m proud to have enlisted more than 2,500 Coloradans in this cause, covering every county in the state.

Join us.  Together, we’ll prove that you can get elected to national office not just by trolling for dollars on Wall Street but by talking to people on Main Street.

Someone once said there are two kinds of politicians in the world: those who want to be somebody and those who want to do something.  I’m running for the Senate because I want to get some things done.  I will not flinch from tough decisions.  I will fight every day for the far-reaching reforms we deserve in health care, job growth and energy policy.  And I will jam the revolving door on Capitol Hill, so that lawmakers and lobbyists can no longer form job-sharing agreements that turn public office into private gain.

If you believe, as I do, that we need to change the tune in Washington, not just the politicians who dance to it, sign up right now.

It’s been a month since we did this last, so it’s time to poll again. We’ll compare the results from this month and last month after voting is complete.

As we’ve done in other election years, we regularly poll our readers on various races to gauge changing perceptions. These obviously aren’t scientific polls, but they do help to show how the perception of various candidates are changing. We’ll conduct these polls each month and then show the results to see how the winds are shifting.

As always, please vote based on what you think will happen, not on who you would vote for or which candidate you support personally. Think of it this way: If you had to bet the deed to your house, who would you pick?

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Former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff’s campaign for U.S. Senate is only about a month old, but much of the buzz surrounding his bid to take out incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet has not been positive.

As we’ve said before in this space, it’s amazing that Romanoff could have been thinking about running for Senate for so many months, yet still be this unprepared for what it’s going to take for him to win. An email sent yesterday by Sue Casey — who is being called a “Senior Advisor” to Romanoff’s campaign — makes our point perfectly:

Learn for yourself what we know:

Andrew knows how to lead.

He has a record of solving problems and crafting solutions to tough problems.

Andrew’s career has been all about bringing people together to make a difference in the lives of hard working people here in Colorado.

Andrew is someone all Coloradans can count on to make their concerns his cause.

What a bunch of complete nonsense. Romanoff has absolutely NO message at this point for why you should vote for him for Senate other than “Vote Romanoff: He’s a Nice Guy and All.” Andrew knows how to lead — that’s something you’d expect to see on a website for someone running for the state legislature.

If Romanoff is going to gain any real traction in this race outside of a core group of supporters, he needs to come up with an actual reason for why he’s running aside from the unspoken “because I’m still pissed off at Bill Ritter” rationale. That he doesn’t have a coherent message is not only inexcusable, it’s potentially fatal.

As the Denver Post reports:

The campaign for U.S. Senate candidate-come-lately Andrew Romanoff said Tuesday that it had raised more than $200,000 in the 21 days he was eligible to collect donations in the third quarter.

Romanoff needed a big start to show he’s viable, though he will have to keep up the pace to compete with the fundraising juggernaut of Sen. Michael Bennet, who has taken in $2.5 million and counting since his appointment in January, analysts say.

Romanoff fundraisers collected cash from more than 1,500 individuals, said spokeswoman Joelle Martinez, using that figure to bolster Romanoff’s image as the race’s grassroots candidate…

$200,000 divided by 21 days equals $9,523 per day. Given the reduced amount of time Andrew Romanoff had to raise funds compared to opponent Michael Bennet, the per-day number is the best indicator available for how Romanoff is matching up so far. Extrapolating that per-day figure across 90 days, or one whole quarter of fundraising, $9,523 a day would total just over $857,000.

Of course extrapolated money isn’t real, and Romanoff’s early fundraising was the low-hanging fruit. We expect Bennet will report more than a million dollars for the third consecutive quarter, so will Romanoff’s curved total be enough to stay viable? This brief fundraising quarter was a free pass for Romanoff, so to speak. Now the real work begins; what he raises in Q4 will say a lot about whether he can really win a primary against Bennet. Ultimately, this brief report doesn’t tell us much. It isn’t high enough to get overly excited, but it isn’t low enough to worry about, either.

With less than a year until the 2010 primaries, it’s time to start the annual Colorado Pols Polls.

As we’ve done in other election years, we regularly poll our readers on various races to gauge changing perceptions. These obviously aren’t scientific polls, but they do help to show how the perception of various candidates are changing. We’ll conduct these polls each month and then show the results to see how the winds are shifting.

As always, please vote based on what you think will happen, not on who you would vote for or which candidate you support personally. Think of it this way: If you had to bet the deed to your house, who would you pick?

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UPDATE: Westword’s blog says that Bennet was backing away from the public option on the air, but Polster redstateblues found the quote from the show, and it’s not nearly as damning:

Silverman: “Are you for a public option? Because when it comes to business, I think about the PXs on a military base, and I’ve never been able to shop there because I’m not a member of the military, but I understand they have low prices. How could King Soopers and Safeway compete with a PX?”

Bennet: “Well, I have supported… I do support a public option, and I have supported it. [Pols emphasis] Let me tell you why, and then I’ll answer your question. The reason is, that I have heard so many stories from people all over the state from people who have paid in every single year and then when they needed it or, you know, when their kid got sick, and they needed it, it wasn’t there anymore. And they are really resentful of the fact that somebody earned a profit off that commercial transaction. There are… the weird thing about insurance is that you pay for it way in advance, usually, of when you use it, and there have been a lot of folks who have had terrible experiences with that. I don’t think we should have a subsidized plan that would compete unfairly, as some have said, in the market, but I think a non-subsidized plan that, like I said, doesn’t have the high administrative costs and is available just as a choice–just as an option in the market–I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”

We still say that strong support of the public option will be critical for Bennet in a primary battle, but it definitely looks like Westword’s claim that he was “backing away” in this interview is not correct.

Original post after the jump…

We’ve written before in this space that Sen. Michael Bennet and his political advisors erred greatly in trying to make him appear as a centrist while a potential primary challenge from Andrew Romanoff was still looming. Focusing on what Bennet would present to general election voters is great if you know you won’t have a primary, but Romanoff was always the bigger threat to Bennet’s election than any Republican candidates out there.

Nonetheless, it doesn’t appear is if Bennet has learned his lesson. Or maybe nobody told him that Romanoff is running. Westword writes this morning that Bennet was backing away from the “Public Option” piece of health care reform on an appearance on KHOW radio:

Naturally, the topic of healthcare reform was front and center, and Bennet, like so many other members of his party, made it clear that a public option is no longer a make-or-break facet of the plan. Indeed, he said too much attention has been paid to this element, thereby obscuring many of the proposal’s other fine and important aspects. He also used a buzz term we’ll be hearing much more in the coming weeks: “deficit neutral” — meaning that he doesn’t want the final bill to push the nation’s finances any deeper into the red. In truth, there’s no way to say with absolute certainty that this will be the case, since any such determination will be based on projections, estimates and other sorts of guesswork — but it sounds good.

What. Are. You. Doing?

A “public option” is very popular among Democrats, and the more Bennet backs away from this, the bigger an opportunity he presents Romanoff. If we were Romanoff, we’d make certain that affirming support for a public option was one of our main talking points at tomorrow’s campaign kickoff. “Romanoff supports the public option, Bennet doesn’t,” would be a very clear delineation for Democratic voters.