By MICHAEL DE YOANNA
Rocky Mountain Chronicle
Colorado’s GOP kingmaker comes home to bring life back to an ailing party.
Dick Wadhams is surrounded by disarray — half-filled boxes, an unhung picture, stacks of papers — as the phone next to him rings continuously. But The Next Karl Rove, a possible “evil genius,” isn’t moving into this Denver office building; he’s moving out. The 52-year-old Republican explains that the rent is cheaper in Arapahoe County, just south along the interstate.
Besides, there are more Republican loyalists down there.
Dressed in a striped oxford shirt, his pen stuffed in the left pocket, Wadhams winces and chuckles at the labels he’s earned in recent years: cutthroat, a dirty-trick player, an itinerant, political hit man — someone capable of hammering the media into submission.
“No. No. No,” he says, waving a dismissive hand. “Not me.”
The controversial conservative kingmaker has come home after a four-year round-trip that has taken him far from the Rockies to the party’s upper strata. Somewhere along the way, he was crowned Rove 2.0 and, actually, should be somewhere else right now — on the road, blazing Virginia’s George Allen a path to the White House.
But in mid-2006 that dream turned to a steaming pile of “macaca.”
Allen hurled the insult, either a racist slur or a kind of monkey, at a man of Indian descent while campaigning for reelection to the U.S. Senate before promptly disappearing into the political landfill.
“I picked my horse and the horse went off the cliff,” Wadhams says, laughing into a sigh, then calling Allen’s comment “stupid” and “politically fatal.”
After that mess, Colorado Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany phoned his friend Wadhams, urging him home to help the state’s ailing GOP. Wadhams called his former bosses, Senator Wayne Allard and former Governor Bill Owens, then ran for, and won, the chair of the state Republican Party.
Unlike other party chairs who have gone without pay, Wadhams earns a salary, which he justifies because, unlike volunteer chiefs, he is fulfilling the job of executive director as well. He’s held the two-year seat since March, owing to a nudge from The Man Himself — not President Bush, but Rove, who endorsed Wadhams in his bid.
“Poor old Mark Udall,” Wadhams says, smiling as he envisions Udall at the Democratic National Convention in Denver next August. Udall, he imagines, will have to hold hands with his predicted presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, and that’s bad because Clinton has high negative ratings, which could cost Udall swing votes if “Clinton burnout” is high.
Wadhams is picking apart Udall’s decade-long record as a state legislator and representative of Colorado’s Second Congressional District. Look for Wadhams to go after Udall’s initial support for a bill that sought to create a department of peace.
In Larimer, Wadhams recently defended Larimer County Republican Chair Ed Haynes, who caused a ruckus when he used the word “n*****” during a public hearing at Colorado State University on the Rocky Mountain Collegian’s “Taser this: F*** BUSH” editorial. Haynes asked the crowd, “‘What would have been the reaction if it read, ‘Taser this...Obama is a n*****’”? Wadhams says Haynes apparently wanted to show that some words should not be expressed.
“He was trying to drive home a serious point and, from what I saw in the papers, he succeeded,” Wadhams says. “His overall point, I think, is a good one.”
Rocky Mountain Chronicle
Colorado’s GOP kingmaker comes home to bring life back to an ailing party.
Dick Wadhams is surrounded by disarray — half-filled boxes, an unhung picture, stacks of papers — as the phone next to him rings continuously. But The Next Karl Rove, a possible “evil genius,” isn’t moving into this Denver office building; he’s moving out. The 52-year-old Republican explains that the rent is cheaper in Arapahoe County, just south along the interstate.
Besides, there are more Republican loyalists down there.
Dressed in a striped oxford shirt, his pen stuffed in the left pocket, Wadhams winces and chuckles at the labels he’s earned in recent years: cutthroat, a dirty-trick player, an itinerant, political hit man — someone capable of hammering the media into submission.
“No. No. No,” he says, waving a dismissive hand. “Not me.”
The controversial conservative kingmaker has come home after a four-year round-trip that has taken him far from the Rockies to the party’s upper strata. Somewhere along the way, he was crowned Rove 2.0 and, actually, should be somewhere else right now — on the road, blazing Virginia’s George Allen a path to the White House.
But in mid-2006 that dream turned to a steaming pile of “macaca.”
Allen hurled the insult, either a racist slur or a kind of monkey, at a man of Indian descent while campaigning for reelection to the U.S. Senate before promptly disappearing into the political landfill.
“I picked my horse and the horse went off the cliff,” Wadhams says, laughing into a sigh, then calling Allen’s comment “stupid” and “politically fatal.”
How about "wrong" and "racist."
To put the comment in context, Allen was speaking to an all-white crowd in rural Virginia.
He noticed a representative of his opponent's campaign, S.R. Sidarth, who happens to be of Indian descent, and said: "This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent."
As the crowd laughed, Allen added: "Let's give a welcome to macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."
Sidarth was born and raised in Virginia.
At the time, Wadhams said Allen had "nothing to apologize for."
After that mess, Colorado Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany phoned his friend Wadhams, urging him home to help the state’s ailing GOP. Wadhams called his former bosses, Senator Wayne Allard and former Governor Bill Owens, then ran for, and won, the chair of the state Republican Party.
Unlike other party chairs who have gone without pay, Wadhams earns a salary, which he justifies because, unlike volunteer chiefs, he is fulfilling the job of executive director as well. He’s held the two-year seat since March, owing to a nudge from The Man Himself — not President Bush, but Rove, who endorsed Wadhams in his bid.
Rove recommended Wadhams to Colorado Republicans just as he recommended Wadhams to John Thune when Thune was running for Senator in South Dakota. It paid off for Thune.
Wadhams hit on a winning strategy when he paid bloggers to pretend they were independent and relentlessly attack Thune's opponent and bully the mainstream press. Those bloggers, working for Wadhams, worked with Jeff Gannon, who wa probably working for Rove.
Jeff Gannon, you may recall, covered the White House (he had no trouble getting a press pass) for an entity called Talon News Service.
It turned out that Talon News Service was a Republican sham and Gannon turned out to be -- it's getting to be kind of a Republican theme -- a gay prostitute who ran an escort website that he decorated with nude pictures of himself.
(The Secret Service background checks must have missed that, unless Gannon had a friend in the White House. The U.S. House and Senate denied him press passes because his application didn't check out. Oh, Gannon also had access to the secret documents that outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent in the Rove-inspired attack on Plame's husband).
I mention the gay prostitute part because articles Gannon wrote for the phony news service included comments like John Kerry "might someday be known as 'the first gay president" and derided the "pro-gay agenda."
In any case, the whole Wadhams strategy worked: Thune beat incumbent Sen. Tom Daschle.
“Poor old Mark Udall,” Wadhams says, smiling as he envisions Udall at the Democratic National Convention in Denver next August. Udall, he imagines, will have to hold hands with his predicted presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, and that’s bad because Clinton has high negative ratings, which could cost Udall swing votes if “Clinton burnout” is high.
Poor Mark Udall because Wadhams is going to attack him relentlessly the way he attacked Tom Strickland to get Wayne Allard elected senator.
Wadhams is picking apart Udall’s decade-long record as a state legislator and representative of Colorado’s Second Congressional District. Look for Wadhams to go after Udall’s initial support for a bill that sought to create a department of peace.
In Larimer, Wadhams recently defended Larimer County Republican Chair Ed Haynes, who caused a ruckus when he used the word “n*****” during a public hearing at Colorado State University on the Rocky Mountain Collegian’s “Taser this: F*** BUSH” editorial. Haynes asked the crowd, “‘What would have been the reaction if it read, ‘Taser this...Obama is a n*****’”? Wadhams says Haynes apparently wanted to show that some words should not be expressed.
“He was trying to drive home a serious point and, from what I saw in the papers, he succeeded,” Wadhams says. “His overall point, I think, is a good one.”
So the F-word is rude, and insulting the President is rude, and that somehow makes it OK for a Republican Party leader to insult every American of African descent? The overall point, I think, is a bad one.
No comments:
Post a Comment