In his March 21 column, the Rocky Mountain News' Peter Blake singled out Democratic state Treasurer Cary Kennedy for “fil[ing] her campaign reports manually last year, not electronically like most candidates.” According to Blake, Kennedy's decision to file manually led to an error by the secretary of state that made it seem as if “Jared Polis gave two $1,000 checks” to her 2006 campaign, which would have violated Colorado's campaign finance laws. However, Blake failed to mention that four of the seven other statewide major-party candidates in 2006 filed manually, including Kennedy's opponent, Mark Hillman. Blake also did not disclose until halfway through his column that, in fact, Polis and Kennedy had not violated campaign laws.

In his column, Blake referred to Polis as “financier of Amendment 41 and thus the scourge of all Capitol lobbyists," then proceeded to explain how records from Colorado's secretary of state's office showed that “Polis gave $1,000 to [Kennedy's] campaign March 27, and another $1,000 on June 15”:

If true, that means that Polis -- financier of Amendment 41 and thus the scourge of all Capitol lobbyists -- violated Colorado's campaign finance laws.

[...]

Different addresses in Boulder were used -- one a street number, one a post office box -- but “entrepreneur” was listed as the occupation for both.

And entrepreneur he is, having turned himself into a multimillionaire by selling his parents' greeting-card business to an Internet company during the tech boom of the late 1990s, and starting numerous other companies since. On the side he served six years on the state board of education.

He's not naive. Is he careless? And what about Kennedy's campaign? Surely a treasurer candidate's treasurer would be very careful not to take too much money from any one source.

However, after initially implying that Polis and Kennedy might have broken Colorado's campaign finance laws, Blake -- seven paragraphs after making that suggestion -- noted that “the mistake was made at the secretary of state's office, where they have to transfer the manual filings into the main computer database.” According to Blake:

And it turns out that Kennedy filed her campaign reports manually last year, not electronically like most candidates. And on the original sheets the June 15 contribution was said to come from June Polis, not Jared.

[...]

June turns out to be Jared's grandmother. She had been sales manager at Blue Mountain Arts, the company started by Polis' parents, and now lives part of the year in San Diego. And thus her contribution to Kennedy's campaign is every bit as legitimate as the matching contributions often given to candidates by the spouses of business tycoons who've already maxed out.

In addition to making an issue out of an apparent typographical error that was not committed by either Polis or Kennedy, Blake further stated, “The lesson for candidates is that if you can file electronically, you'd better do so. Otherwise, like Kennedy, you run the same risk as reporters in the pre-computer days.”

Blake, however, failed to note that of the eight 2006 statewide major-party candidates -- for governor, secretary of state, treasurer, and attorney general -- only three of them filed electronically, according to the Colorado Secretary of State's office: Gov. Bill Ritter (D), Secretary of State candidate Ken Gordon (D), and Attorney General John Suthers (R). All of the other candidates filed manually: Kennedy, Hillman (R), gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez (R), attorney general candidate Fern O'Brien (D), and Secretary of State Mike Coffman (R).