In a March 1 article about political websites that “play dirty,” the Rocky Mountain News uncritically quoted likely incoming state GOP chairman Dick Wadhams as saying, “I probably would invite more of this from the other side, because I think it hurts them. So let the crap flow.” The News, however, failed to note Wadhams' own widely reported use of dirty play in the 2004 U.S. Senate race in South Dakota between Republican John Thune and incumbent Democrat Tom Daschle.

The News article by M.E. Sprengelmeyer recounted recent instances -- including one allegedly targeting Wadhams -- in which “anonymous Web sites and blogs ... test old political boundaries of privacy and good taste, sometimes substituting dark satire and partisan fiction for facts and opinion”:

The Internet has become an integral part of modern politics; onetime presidential candidate Howard Dean made it an essential tool for organizing and fundraising. But increasingly, cyberspace also has a dark side.

[...]

Another anonymous Web site recently touched off a spate of online attacks and counterattacks after it took potshots at a congressman's daughter.

The site was denounced by both Democrats and Republicans because it broke a longstanding taboo.

“Family members are off-limits in this business,” said Dick Wadhams, the longtime Republican consultant who's running for the state GOP chairmanship.

Wadhams found himself a target of a Web site that included a string of supposed Wadhams talking points like (expletive deleted), (expletive deleted) and (expletive deleted).

The quotes were bogus, of course, but it typifies part of what the Internet has added to the marketplace of ideas.

“The public has a way of sorting through all this, and I do think that crossing the line as clearly as these things do will hurt their cause ultimately,” Wadhams said this week. “So actually, from a political standpoint, I probably would invite more of this from the other side, because I think it hurts them. So let the crap flow.”

The News, however, omitted Wadhams' reported history of hiring webloggers as covert political operatives and his use of other online media members while serving as Thune's campaign manager in 2004. As the online political daily news site Colorado Confidential noted on January 9, during Thune's campaign against then-Senate Democratic leader Daschle, Wadhams secretly employed political operatives to use their blogs for harassing the state's largest newspaper for supposed “pro-Daschle bias”:

Early in the election cycle, Wadhams hired political operatives to act as independent bloggers -- two of whom earned a combined $35,000 for their services without publicly disclosing their ties to the campaign. In blogger parlance, Daschle v Thune, South Dakota Politics and others were “astroturfing”, or creating a fake grassroots movement, for Wadham's candidate.

Their task: to relentlessly attack the state's largest newspaper, the Argus Leader, and question the integrity of its chief political reporter David Kranz, state editor Patrick Lalley, and executive editor Randell Beck. The bloggers were to engage in a psy-ops mind game to force the trio to overcompensate for the fake criticisms of editorial bias thus publishing more harsh coverage of Daschle.

The blog attacks were coordinated with a cadre of national conservative pundits and journalists to amplify the dirty tricks. One of the bloggers' primary sources was Jeff Gannon, who worked for Talon News Service, a media front organization for GOPUSA. Gannon was later exposed by AmericaBlog as a gay prostitute with a thriving escort website containing nude photographs of himself while ostensibly working as a journalist who was credentialed with a White House press pass.

Wadhams' clandestine employment of the bloggers to skew coverage of the race in Thune's favor also was reported by The Washington Monthly in a September 2006 article and the online magazine Slate in a June 10, 2005, article. The Washington Monthly noted that that the Argus Leader's “dazed editors later admitted the mau-mauing influenced their campaign coverage. Thune beat Daschle by fewer than 4,000 votes.”

A March 9, 2005, article published on the website of The New Republic reported on how Wadhams' client, Thune, briefed other Republican senators on his campaign's use of “bloggers and partisan Internet 'journalism' ” to win the race:

In late January, Republican members of Congress convened at a rural West Virginia resort to plot strategy for the new congressional session and the 2006 midterm elections. They held meetings, on issues like Social Security and tax reform, led by committee chairmen and even the president himself. But no session generated as much interest as the one led by a mere freshman, John Thune of South Dakota. It's rare for such a junior senator to lecture his wizened colleagues. But Thune's elders listened with rapt attention as he explained how bloggers and partisan Internet “journalism” helped him defeat former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle last fall. David Winston, a GOP pollster who was present, says that, “given that success story, the senators were very interested. ... A lot of conversation went back and forth. I think we were scheduled for about an hour, and it went an hour and a half.” Even senators who missed out on the session have been asking for details of Thune's story.

As Colorado Media Matters has noted (here, here, here, and here), several Colorado media outlets have uncritically quoted or praised Wadhams without reporting his established history of using negative campaign strategies to achieve some of his notable successes.