Colo. Republicans run from Steele

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele showed up in Colorado Thursday but the GOP’s top statewide candidates didn’t exactly roll out the welcome wagon.

While scores of activists and local party officials attended a ceremony opening the headquarters of the Colorado Republican Party’s Victory program in Greenfield Village, the GOP candidates for governor and Senate declined invitations to appear with him. Their absence suggested the degree of Steele’s isolation, a week after he made comments questioning the Obama administration’s approach to the war in Afghanistan.


The RNC reached out to a number of Republican candidates, including former Rep. Scott McInnis, who’s running for governor, and former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, the national GOP’s favored candidate for Senate, to invite them to the event. Neither McInnis nor Norton accepted.

“He has another event elsewhere,” McInnis spokesman Sean Duffy explained. “It was, ‘Can you guys attend an opening on this day, at this time?’ And Scott just wasn’t available.”

Duffy said he could not recall the details of McInnis’s scheduling conflict and declined to say whether McInnis would have joined Steele if his schedule had permitted it.

Norton’s campaign confirmed that the RNC approached them about the event several weeks ago, but explained that Norton had already planned to campaign that day with Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch. And Norton told POLITICO this week that she did not approve of Steele’s comments on Afghanistan.

“I do think Michael Steele’s comments about the war were downright erroneous and unfortunate,” Norton said in an interview. “I do think the party needs its very best leadership going forward in the 2010 and 2012 elections and I have been disappointed in some of the comments the chairman has made.”

While the Colorado GOP’s Victory program is geared toward gathering resources for general election candidates, Norton spokeswoman Cinamon Watson said the candidate’s meetings with activists were an essential part of her strategy.

“The bottom line is we're reaching out as many Colorado primary voters as we can,” Watson said. “We have a lot of activists joining us at events tomorrow who are going to help us reach out to Colorado voters."

Norton’s chief rival in the Republican Senate primary, Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, didn’t exactly rush to the event, either. Buck planned to attend a fundraiser with South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, said spokesman Owen Loftus, who explained: “We’ve been planning this for so long we haven’t even thought about it.”

The Colorado Republican Party said that there was never a plan for anyone but Steele to host the Victory headquarters event, and spokeswoman Chelsey Penoyer insisted: “It was just out of the blue that Chairman Steele would be there.”

But a week after Steele’s remarks on Afghanistan — he made them during a trip to Connecticut for state Republicans and Senate candidate Linda McMahon — he has yet to appear in public with any of the party’s major candidates. While Rep. Mike Coffman, running for reelection in a safe House district, attended Steele's Thursday event, none of the party’s top House candidates made it to Thursday’s event.

RNC Communications Director Doug Heye disputed the notion that candidates were dodging Steele, noting that Coffman, state Sen. Nancy Spence and Colorado GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams, were among the many officials who attended the event.

"We were happy to visit the Denver-area victory center," Heye wrote in an email to POLITICO. "With more than 100 people in attendance, every seat taken and a lot of folks standing, it's clear the GOP enthusiasm in Colorado is high."

Steele is set to speak this weekend at the Washington State Republican Party’s Republican Resurgence Rally this weekend. He is the only guest speaker listed on the state GOP’s website.