Michael Bennet’s video in which he charges that Phil Weiser bailed on a debate at CBS Colorado Monday night is very funny.
But is it true?
Bennet says it is. He put out a press release, saying that both candidates “agreed to participate on a date initially proposed by the Weiser campaign.”
And he charged that Weiser pulled out of the debate because he didn’t want to answer questions about a recent report from CBS Colorado’s Shaun Boyd — who would have moderated the debate — that Weiser had accepted $75,000 in campaign contributions from attorneys at 12 law firms that had business before the AG’s office.
Weiser’s campaign didn’t want to talk about the details of the debate decision on the record. In fact, the campaign would rather not talk about it at all, but still made clear their contention that the debate date was never confirmed by Weiser. And it’s certainly true the debate was never promoted by the TV station.
And yet, the charge is problematic enough that Weiser, who bases much of his campaign on the premise that he always shows up, released his own video in reply, slamming Bennet for missing forums and debates, including those he missed while doing the being-a-senator part of his job. Bennet also gets hit when he misses Senate votes because of the campaign-for-governor part of his job.
I guess Bennet could have resigned from the Senate when he decided to make his run for governor, but that’s not how these things generally work. It isn’t as if Weiser, who is term limited, has resigned from his job as attorney general.
On Tuesday night, CBS News Colorado Assistant News Director Jeff Gurney posted on the station’s website that while both candidates had, in fact, agreed on the June 15 date. But Weiser said four days before the debate that “something has come up” and the date no longer worked. When the alternative the Weiser camp offered didn’t work for Bennet, the station asked Weiser if any other date would work.
According to Gurney, the Weiser campaign said, “I don’t think so. Apologies.”
As Boyd’s report makes clear, there’s nothing illegal in what Weiser was reported to have done. But Weiser had agreed, back in a 2022 campaign for attorney general, that he wouldn’t accept funds from those lawyers whose firms are involved with matters before the AG’s office, as he should.
Is it a big deal or a smallish one?
Either way, it’s extremely hard to believe that Weiser would bail because he was afraid to answer one question in a debate. It’d be far more believable, in fact, if he refused to confirm the date because he felt the Boyd story had overreached.
But here’s why I’m writing about it.
Suddenly, Bennet needs an issue because the race has apparently gotten that tight. Sadly, there hasn’t been much reliable polling on the race — Weiser recently released an internal poll showing him only six points behind — but no one thinks this race will be anything like a rout, which is what it looked like back when Bennet began his surprising campaign to leave the oft-broken Senate to run for governor.
The big news came in a Colorado Sun report Tuesday that Bennet had loaned his campaign nearly a million dollars — money that is very unlikely to be repaid — while Michael Bloomberg donated another $2 million to the super PAC supporting Bennet. He has contributed $4.6 million to Rocky Mountain Way, which has raised $10.3 million in this campaign.
If the race weren’t tight, Bennet wouldn’t need the money to pay for closing ads of his own.
The obvious question about Bloomberg’s contributions is what’s in it for Bloomberg, who does own property near Aspen. But the answer, from my reporting, is that I haven’t heard a good answer. The multibillionaire has often given money to Colorado political and policy campaigns, but the number for Bennet is huge. When Bennet was asked about it at a Colorado Sun gubernatorial forum on Saturday, he said he had no idea — super PACs and campaigns, by law, cannot work together, although too often they do exchange winks and nods — and that we’d have to ask Bloomberg.
It will not surprise you that Colorado media outlets have asked and that Bloomberg has not responded.
The other obvious question is how Weiser has been able to raise a remarkable, record-breaking amount of money — more than $6 million — for his campaign, easily breaking John Hickenlooper’s record when he ran for governor in 2014. I haven’t seen any recent polling on Weiser’s name recognition — but earlier in the campaign, polling showed that 30% of respondents had never heard of him.
I’d have to think that’s changed, if only by the flood of campaign advertising. It’s unlikely that this race would be this close if Weiser hadn’t done such a remarkable job fundraising, with 93% of contributions coming from Coloradans.
When asked about the latest campaign funding reports, Weiser spokesperson Nate Jackson sent this statement:
“The out-of-state billionaires, special interests, and corporations bankrolling Michael Bennet’s campaign are dumping millions into this race at the eleventh hour for one reason: they are desperate because they know Phil’s people-powered campaign is surging. The billionaires and corporations backing Michael Bennet have an agenda for him — Phil’s only agenda is to fight for the people of Colorado.”
I’d love to hear what the specific agendas might be, but, again, that’s not how campaigns generally work. And while the big-money contributors to Bennet’s super PAC are concerning — can we get another look at Citizens United, please? — that’s what nearly every underdog candidate charges, even those who manage to escape the underdog label.
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The truth is that these two candidates are generally in agreement on most issues. And the biggest attack line in the debates has often been that the other candidate is not being sufficiently detailed about his programs to address issues like housing costs, public education challenges, too many businesses leaving Colorado and on and on.
These are tough issues, and it’s tough for voters to know which plan, vague or detailed, can possibly work. Let’s just say I’m pretty sure the nonstop ads have done little to make those decisions any easier. But we can say that the clear winner in the race is the TV stations who are paid the big bucks to run those ads.
Since the news broke that Bennet would enter the race, Weiser has campaigned on the slogan of Weiser for governor, Bennet for senator.
It’s a smart slogan, although given the attacks on Bennet, you’d have to wonder why Weiser would want him in any public service job.
But if Weiser’s wish comes true, it would be one of the great upsets in Colorado political history. And that’s not even debatable.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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