A new TV ad hitting GOP Colorado House District 23 candidate Rick Enstrom hard over his 1985 arrest for selling drug paraphernalia is reportedly up with targeted cable buys:

And here’s a new mailer attacking Enstrom on the same issue:

Yesterday, Lynn Bartels of the Denver paper updated the Rick Enstrom drug paraphernalia story. Bartels quotes Kate Porras of the Grand Junction Police Department confirming the original police report’s correct use of the term “arrest.” But Bartels also quotes a spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigations saying that a court summons of this could would not necessarily count as an arrest, saying “usually an arrest also entails booking into jail.”

Our own sources with law enforcement experience tell us that they’re essentially both right–law enforcement do commonly refer to these as arrests. In the case of CBI, they are wholly dependent on the arrest and court case information given to them by local governments, and many misdemeanor arrests, especially older ones, are never entered into the system. As for whether or not a person in this circumstance can “truthfully” say they’ve never been arrested?

Our friends tell us you shouldn’t contradict the police record unless you want a headache.

Bottom line: as we said when this story broke, the real problem here is Enstrom’s hasty blanket denials. He would have done much better to have simply acknowledged this misdemeanor incident from the 1980s and moved on. Enstrom’s first reaction, to threaten legal action over the “false claim” he had been arrested, was severely undermined by the police report clearly stating he was arrested. Bartels’ latest story has Enstrom walking that back that rhetoric almost completely, quibbling about semantics, giving the Grand Junction Police Department another opportunity to impugn his credibility, and too-belatedly acknowledging “I did what I did.”

For a top-tier GOP legislative candidate, it’s stunning Enstrom wasn’t better prepared for this.