Remember last week when former Gov. Jim Gilmore’s campaign released internal canvassing numbers to suggest that Gilmore had wrapped up the Republican nomination to run for U.S. Senate.
At the time, the spokesman for Republican hopeful Bob Marshall called the claim “baloney,” because delegates for the convention are still being elected.
On Thursday, Marshall’s campaign got a little more personal, pointing on some of the history of Gilmore’s political guru Dick Leggitt. Marhsall’s team is pulling Leggitt’s history and noting that he feed cooked polling data to reporters in Colorado in 2006.
That campaign was the Marc Holtzman campaign, one marked as a particularly vicious campaign against the eventual nominee, Congressman Bob Beauprez. You can read the details here. As a result of a poorly run campaign, some of the strangest ads I’ve ever seen run, and the bruising primary, Beauprez lost his gubernatorial bid to Democrat Bill Ritter by a 10pt. margin.
The conservative Rocky Mountain News back in May 2006 was particularly harsh, but focused more on whether someone should be sued for presenting false poll numbers (which was the rallying cry immediately after Leggitt came clean on the numbers as “spin”):
If Holtzman wants to employ someone who lies to the press in such brazen fashion, that’s his business. Journalists will adjust their reports depending on whether they feel they can trust anything he now says. For some, the answer will be no.
But as for there being an obligation to fire Leggitt, that’s nonsense. The Colorado law is – or at least should be – unconstitutional. You can’t outlaw false campaign rhetoric, intentional or not. Indeed, we can hardly think of anything more destructive to free speech than inviting courts to rule on political truthfulness and honesty.
A little perspective is needed: No one is going to court in Virginia over delegate counts.
Yes. folks are going to dump on Dick Leggitt for awhile for previous missteps. That’s stupid, because the best way to make sure you do have the horses is to bring them yourself. That’s bring them, not count them on some spreadsheet in some vacated box store.
Personally, there’s the nagging doubt that Leggitt might have the goods. How do I know? Because Leggitt isn’t doing the delegate count for Gilmore — Matt Wells is. Second, after getting caught in the Holtzman debacle, few good political hacks are willing to make the same mistake twice. Lastly… Dick Leggitt is a good guy who wants his guy to win. That’s not a crime… loyalty to a fault, perhaps… but not a crime.
If Gilmore is off in the delegate count, it’s because they are being misinformed by troops on the ground. Having worked with Matt before… well… he thought it was close, he’d be more worried. Then there’s that small thing about delegates not wanting to be on the wrong side, so they tell both sides “of course I’m supporting ____________!!!!”
Psychology at it’s best.
Marshall’s team isn’t wrong to bring up the past, but let’s keep in mind one thing: Total number of delegates this adds to the actual tally? ZERO.
Get back to work!
(In the interests of full disclosure, I was in Colorado as campaign manager for the CO-04 race, starting in about a month after the Beauprez-Holtzman race had settled out… not only did I not have a dog in that race, I only had to deal with the aftermath in my corner of Northern and Eastern Colorado.)