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UPDATE: Rocky Botches CD-5 Results

August 9, 2006

A response from the Rocky Mountain News is detailed bellow.

It was primary night. Parties were being held, candidates were determining their fates, and the Rocky Mountain News was declaring the wrong winner in the 5th congressional district.

A picture obtained from RedState.com, a conservative blog site, shows that the News declared Republican Jeff Crank the winner of the CD-5 primary, when the real winner was later found to be Doug Lamborn, another GOP candidate in the race.

As Confidant Cara DeGette reported last night, Lamborn upset his competitors by taking the race when all of the absentee ballots were finally tallied:

In this night on pins and needles, the joke that got the most laughs was a print-out copy of an early online Rocky Mountain News report being passed around the celebration party. The headline? “Crank Triumphant in 5th.” A true “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment.

According to the picture, the report was published past typical news “prime time,” at 10:34 pm. A request to speak with a News editor about the issue was denied.

UPDATE: A response from John Temple, Editor, President & Publisher of the Rocky Mountain News, in an E-Mail:

It’s correct that I miscalled the 5th in favor of Crank. The incorrect headline was up for about 10 minutes, to my knowledge. Based on the number of precincts reporting and the trends, it did not appear to us that Lamborn could win. Obviously we were wrong. Our mistake came because we didn’t understand El Paso County’s approach to absentee ballots. When the absentees were put into the mix, they shifted the results and of course we changed our call. The incorrect results never appeared in the paper. We regret the error.