The Anatomy of a Smear Campaign

The “cartoon” below appeared in print and online editions of The Examiner newspapers this week. These publications are owned by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, who is well-known to Colorado Democrats because he has repeatedly funded anti-labor and anti-gay ballot initiatives in our state. He has also been a major funding source for various committees of the national Republican Party and has contributed thousands of dollars over the years to Tom Tancredo. Although Philip Anschutz publicly supports Jane Norton in this year’s senate race, he funneled $100,000 to Michael Bennet’s campaign in 2009 from PACs and executives of companies he controlled at that time.

Michael Bennet spent his first six years in Colorado (1998-2004) becoming quite wealthy working as a kind of corporate raider for Mr. Anschutz who specializes in buying up distressed and bankrupt companies, consolidating some into new entities, and selling off other pieces for profit. While Mr. Anschutz has been quite successful financially, he is not known for restoring pensions or retirement benefits to employees of his companies.

During his ten years in Colorado before he was appointed to the Senate there is virtually no evidence of Michael Bennet speaking out for minorities or expressing any opinions at all on civil rights or other issues important to progressive Democrats. That is why it is all the more appalling that his campaign is attacking the integrity of Andrew Romanoff.

The cartoon in question was inspired of course by a Denver Post story several weeks ago planted by the Bennet campaign. The story found “manipulation” by the Romanoff campaign in a composite blue-screened banner produced by a volunteer at the top of its website. The image of an African-American woman, a strong supporter of Romanoff, had been moved next to his own image. Neither Romanoff nor anyone on his staff had knowledge of this and the original pictures of the event were so similar to the banner in question that when contacted, the campaign reaction was mostly disbelief that it was a serious story. Bennet’s own campaign had mailed thousands of campaign pieces with his image seeming to sprout from President Obama’s neck just a few weeks before, but this didn’t seem important to The Post. It didn’t matter that the campaign had never represented the banner as anything but a composite.

The banner in question had been in place online for all to see for seven months, apparently without offending anyone. Yet within hours the Bennet campaign had produced a list of about twenty Latinos who seemed deeply offended and demanded an apology. It was granted, and the banner was removed.

Apparently the Bennet campaign had been unable to find any African-Americans who had been offended, but they worked the story hard anyway, making sure every political news entity in America was notified. When the story was about to die, they worked hard to find new ways to keep it alive. The re-telling with no one looking at the original blue screened banner sounded so much more sinister, so fitting to their grand scheme to paint Andrew Romanoff as a racist.

The same Andrew Romanoff who worked in Montgomery, Alabama at the Southern Poverty Law Center fighting racist hate groups as a young man.

The same Andrew Romanoff who went to the trouble to learn to speak fluent Spanish and then taught English to High School kids in rural Central America to help give them a leg up in their lives and to give him a better understanding of their culture.

The same Andrew Romanoff who had the trust of virtually every legislator of any race who he worked with during his remarkable run in the state legislature as their Minority Leader and Speaker.

The same Andrew Romanoff who built a multicultural coalition of Whites, Latinos, and African-Americans to ward off a certain-to-pass ballot measure in 2006 that would have been as harmful and unjust to non-whites in Colorado as the legislation recently passed in Arizona is to minority citizens there.

That Andrew Romanoff.

That’s who the Bennet campaign, terrified of the Colorado electorate, knowing all the special interest money in the world will not be enough to save their candidate, is willing to try to destroy—Andrew Romanoff. And now as their despicable smear campaign is dying, they’ve engaged their Republican ally, Philip Anschutz to publish this distasteful cartoon.

Doesn’t it tell you why there is no place in the Democratic Party for those who would try to smear a good man like Andrew Romanoff? If Michael Bennet had just worked a few precincts with us before his appointment he wouldn’t put up with them either. Call his office in Washington at 202-224-5852 and tell him to get rid of these people. They are hurting him too, and their presence smears all of us.

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