In coverage of Dick Wadhams' election as chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, media outlets continued a trend of highlighting Wadhams' successes while failing to note his history of using negative strategies and media manipulation as a campaign manager -- a pattern that Colorado Media Matters has repeatedly noted (here, here, here, here, and here). Wadhams' March 3 election came after a March 2 Republican dinner in Littleton during which White House political adviser Karl Rove -- himself a noted expert at negative campaign tactics -- endorsed Wadhams.

The Denver Post noted in an article posted January 8 online that “Wadhams is politically brutal enough to be considered a Republican hitman.” But such characterizations have been largely absent from recent reporting about Wadhams, as have accounts about the techniques he has used to achieve victories in U.S. Senate races in South Dakota and Colorado.

2004 South Dakota Senate race

An Associate Press article published March 3 on the Post's website, an article by Karen E. Crummy published in the March 4 edition of the Post, and an article by Ed Sealover that appeared in The Gazette of Colorado Springs on March 4 all noted that Wadhams won the 2004 U.S. Senate race in South Dakota, but none of them noted the negative techniques he employed to win that seat for his client, Republican John Thune. For example, while Crummy's article noted that Washington Monthly had dubbed Wadhams “Rove 2.0” because he was “politically shrewd,” it omitted the magazine's characterizations of Rove's political style as “brutal” and “below-the-belt.”

A September 2006 Washington Monthly article reported, for instance, on how Wadhams manipulated media perceptions to denigrate the incumbent, then-Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle:

In 2004, when Wadhams was helping Republican John Thune to unseat South Dakota Democrat and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, every weapon in the arsenal was unfurled. There were damaging storylines: Daschle was a “pathological liar,” a farm-boy turned effete Michael Moore groupie who had reliably “emboldened Saddam Hussein.” There was base-riling: At many of the state's churches, packages arrived filled with bumper stickers carrying the slogan “Vote Daschle, Vote for Sodomy.” (Wadhams was careful to distance himself personally from those deliveries -- but happy to discuss them.) And there was Wadhams as one-man campaign wrecking ball: When Daschle communications director Dan Pfeiffer tried to squeeze in a media hit after an election-related courthouse faceoff, Wadhams stood just off-camera bellowing “Bullshit! Bullshit!” like an outraged baseball fan cat-calling a major-league ump.

Wadhams's most effective innovations involved media manipulation. Under his leadership, the campaign secretly paid two conservative South Dakota bloggers who spent election season blasting the state's major paper, the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, for supposed pro-Daschle bias. The paper's dazed editors later admitted the mau-mauing influenced their campaign coverage. Thune beat Daschle by fewer than 4,000 votes.

Similarly, the online magazine Slate documented Wadhams' tactics in a June 10, 2005, profile:

In South Dakota he honed his slash-and-burn reputation, relentlessly attacking Daschle about his Washington, D.C., home, luxury car, and lobbyist wife. At one point, Wadhams accused the former minority leader of having “emboldened Saddam Hussein.” Thune won, by a slim margin, and gratefully dubbed his campaign manager “the best pit bull out there.”

[...]

In the South Dakota race, it was Wadhams who relentlessly portrayed Daschle as a former prairie boy who had morphed into an East Coast yuppie. He “is deathly afraid someone will expose his record of saying one thing from his $3 million mansion in Washington, D.C. and saying another thing when he visits South Dakota,” Wadhams told the New York Times Magazine. Asked if he'd feel comfortable levying that line, Thune acknowledged he wouldn't. “But that's why I hired Dick,” he said.

1996 and 2002 Colorado Senate races

Both the AP and Post articles noted that Wadhams managed Republican Wayne Allard's successful 1996 and 2002 U.S. Senate races, both of which were against Democrat Tom Strickland. Neither article noted the tactics -- reported by Slate -- that Wadhams used in those races:

When Wadhams worked for Allard in 1996 and 2002, his two-time opponent Democrat Tom Strickland was widely regarded as the smarter candidate. But Wadhams successfully cast Strickland as an untrustworthy “lawyer-lobbyist” and Allard as a likable, low-key country vet. When it turned out Strickland had made a tidy profit from the IPO of Global Crossing -- a company that figured prominently in the corporate scandals of 2002 -- Wadhams was well-positioned to pounce. Strickland was “up to his mustache in corporate scandal,” he proclaimed, and “probably the dirtiest candidate in America.”

The March 4 Gazette article did mention one of Wadhams' tactics against Strickland and cited political observers who pointed to Wadhams' negative campaigning as his “greatest strength”:

Wadhams' greatest strength, political observers say, is his ability to characterize opponents in his terms rather than theirs, such as the “17th Street lawyer-lobbyist” tin can he tied to the tail of Tom Strickland, Allard's two-time Democratic opponent.

“He's a craftsman in dealing with the media, and he knows how to structure a message in a way that people understand,” Allard said.

The Post article alluded to Wadhams' use of negative campaigning and quoted state Sen. Nancy Spence (R-Centennial) as telling the Republican gathering that elected him that "[h]e's the meanest, roughest, toughest, take-no-prisoners SOB we can get." The Post also reported that Wadhams “wasted no time in previewing what's to come in next year's battle for an open U.S. Senate seat, [by] saying that the Democratic candidate will have a 'bull's-eye' on his back.” But the article gave no examples of the type of tactics Wadhams has used or is likely to use.

From the Associated Press article “Rove promises to 'repaint the state red,' ” published March 3 on The Denver Post's website:

Littleton, Colo. -- The mastermind behind President Bush's successful campaigns on Friday asked state Republicans to back another mastermind who engineered Bill Owens' rise to the governorship and ran a campaign that unseated the U.S. Senate minority leader.

White House political adviser Karl Rove urged the party faithful to stand on Republican principles and elect Dick Wadhams as their new chairman to retake gains made by Democrats in the state.

During a “repaint the state red dinner,” Rove said Republicans suffered a significant defeat in the November elections, but he said he takes a longer view of history and predicted voters will again turn to Republicans for leadership.

“We had a defeat. Can't dress up that pig. We pick ourselves up off the mat, we stand on principle and we get back in the fight,” he told a cheering crowd of hundreds of supporters.

Rove urged supporters to pick Wadhams, who managed successful campaigns in Colorado, Montana and South Dakota before leading a failed Senate campaign in Virginia, to be their new chairman at their central committee meeting on Saturday.

[...]

In Colorado, Wadhams managed Wayne Allard's successful 1996 and 2002 senatorial campaigns, and was the campaign manager for Bill Owens, who in 1998 became the first Republican elected governor in 24 years.

Six years ago, he took Montana Sen. Conrad Burns' ailing campaign and turned it into a victory.

In South Dakota, he was credited with engineering the defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.

From the article " 'Rove 2.0' elected to lead Colo. Republicans," by Karen E. Crummy, published in the March 4 edition of The Denver Post:

Coming off bruising election losses in November, the Colorado Republican Party on Saturday rallied behind a new leader.

Colorado native and political strategist Dick Wadhams, who ran unopposed, was unanimously elected as the state GOP's new chairman.

Though politically shrewd enough to be dubbed “Rove 2.0” by Washington Monthly, his tenacious reputation was cited as one of the big reasons for his win.

“He's the meanest, roughest, toughest, take-no-prisoners SOB we can get,” state Sen. Nancy Spence, R- Centennial, told about 300 Republicans at Douglas County High School.

Wadhams, who has run successful U.S. Senate campaigns in Colorado, Montana and South Dakota, wasted no time in previewing what's to come in next year's battle for an open U.S. Senate seat, saying that the Democratic candidate will have a “bull's-eye” on his back.

From the article “Campaigner tapped to be state GOP leader,” by Ed Sealover, published in the March 4 edition of The Gazette of Colorado Springs:

DENVER -- A year ago, Dick Wadhams never thought he'd be back in Colorado full time trying to resurrect the state Republican Party.

[...]

Wadhams returns to a depleted party. Warming to the party chairman's role as cheerleader, Wadhams says the GOP is ready to bounce back.

He was elected state party chairman Saturday, but he also will take over the duties of executive director, chief recruiter and, essentially, savior of the GOP.

[...]

He gained his reputation as a master campaigner by guiding Allard to two victories, then moved onto the national scene while managing John Thune's huge upset of then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in South Dakota in 2004. He went to work for [former U.S. Sen. George] Allen [R-VA] next, hoping to prepare for a presidential campaign but watched those dreams evaporate when Allen mocked the Indian heritage of one of his opponent's workers on camera.

[...]

Wadhams' greatest strength, political observers say, is his ability to characterize opponents in his terms rather than theirs, such as the “17th Street lawyer-lobbyist” tin can he tied to the tail of Tom Strickland, Allard's two-time Democratic opponent.

“He's a craftsman in dealing with the media, and he knows how to structure a message in a way that people understand,” Allard said.

That style has left him with a number of detractors as well. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had pages of talking points against Wadhams in 2004, and Michael Huttner of the liberal group ProgressNow.org said Wadhams' attempts to blow over Allen's comments last year show he is out of touch.

“This is a guy who has a reputation for misleading the press, for misleading the public,” Huttner said.

Huttner also urged Wadhams to rein in what he called the extremist elements of the Republican Party who question the veracity of sexual-assault claims or equate abortion to slavery, a challenge Wadhams had not heard until last week.

In a telling response, Wadhams turned that comment around and said he hopes to exploit what he called Democratic extremism, citing legislative leaders who have asked Mexico for help on immigration issues or referred to Iraqi insurgents as freedom fighters.

“It's a target-rich environment for what the Dems are going to give us,” he said without pause. “I would agree with ProgressNow -- they're going to have to rein in their own liberal extremists in their own party.”

It's going to be that kind of twoyear term with Wadhams in charge: No matter how much or little he accomplishes, it won't be quietly.