You’d be angry, too, if your name was “Gunny.”
Republican Bob Schaffer apparently announced on Saturday that he would run for U.S. Senate in 2008. As of the writing of today’s Political Gravy, Schaffer has not yet announced that he did not really announce his plans for 2008.
Perhaps because Schaffer already announced his candidacy two weeks ago, though he has denied actually announcing, the Colorado media made little mention of last weekend’s “news.” As The Associated Press reported briefly:
Former U.S. Rep. Bob Schaffer said he plans to seek the GOP nomination for the seat held by retiring U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo.
Schaffer, 45, of Fort Collins, made the announcement Saturday to more than 150 people attending a Boulder County Republican Lincoln dinner.
“After considerable assessment,” Schaffer said, “I’ve decided I’m going to begin putting a campaign together to run for the United States Senate.”
Schaffer filed his official statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, according to the FEC’s Web site. He said he expected to kick off his campaign next year.
In late April, he told the Teller County Republicans’ annual Lincoln dinner that he would be a candidate, people who attended the event said. Schaffer declined to confirm those reports.
All in all, this has been a great couple of weeks for Schaffer’s future candidacy. And by “great” I mean “not really very good at all.”
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Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman on Friday announced that he will investigate the office rulebook, or something. As April Washington of the Rocky Mountain News reports:
Secretary of State Mike Coffman launched an internal review Friday of policies dealing with the moonlighting and outside political activities of employees within his department.
Coffman said he plans to make it “crystal clear” what activities his workers can engage in outside the office and that the policy would include some of the toughest standards in the nation.
Coffman demoted an elections worker and longtime political ally this week who operated a side business selling voter information for mainly Republican interests.
The worker, Dan Kopelman, was reassigned from election operations to a job where he will not have access to voter data. His $85,000 annual salary was cut by $9,240.
“The secretary is very determined that Colorado will have the strongest rules in place to ensure that there is no inappropriate political activity going on with employees in this office,” said secretary of state spokesman Jonathan Tee.
Chantell Taylor, of Colorado Citizens for Ethics in Government, called Coffman’s latest effort to rid his office of conflict of interest problems “good and necessary.”
But, Taylor said, “I’d like to see Coffman himself take some accountability for what has happened here. He had a long history with Dan Kopelman.”
It sure is swell that Coffman is reviewing his department’s policies, but how about actually dealing with the problem here? This is like a referee making a bad call and then blaming the rule book.
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Republican Presidential contender Tommy Thompson has found the mother of all excuses for anything he might say wrong during his campaign
