A public relations firm that led Governor Bill Ritter's failed severance tax campaign and is led by his campaign manager, David Kenney, has apparently launched a sock puppet campaign directed at pseudonymous blog author "Steve Balboni" at his blog Steve Powered Opinions (it looks more like "astroturfing" to me and didn't get very far).
David Kenney is widely believed to be one of the members of Bill Ritter's inner circle who is leading Ritter into political misstep after political misstep. Ritter's chief of staff is another. (Time has yet to tell whether Ritter's appointment to replace U.S. Senator Ken Salazar of U.S. Senator Bennett, a newcomer to elected office who was on nobody's list of likely senatorial appointees, was a fumble or political genius.)
Meanwhile despite multiple anti-union Ritter vetoes that one presumes were meant to win sympathy from the big businesses who care about union-management issues, an apparently grass roots anti-Ritter sign campaign in the Republican heartland of the state seemingly aimed at Ritter's tax stances is afoot. So, it isn't clear that Ritter's efforts to triangulate have led to any inroads with conservatives. While Kenney chalks the latest sign campaign to a Republican plot led by the state party, it seems more plausible to me that grass roots folks from both the left and the right are expressing their discontent, albeit for different reasons.
Fortunately for Ritter, his two identified GOP opponents for 2010, State Senate Minority leader Josh Penry, a young rising star, and Scott McInnis, a former Republican member of Congress from Colorado who quit for no very good reason opening the door for Democrat John Salazar to take the CO-3 seat from his party, are fumbling around with neither establishing himself as the dominant candidate in the race for the GOP nomination. Dan Maes is apparently also running for the nomination but not gaining traction.
No comments:
Post a Comment