Ward gets weirder

Rick Spoor: "Rick Spoor flashes Mike Coffman's delegate voting credential while supporting Wil Armstrong," says Ward's emailFrom all outward appearances CD 6 candidate state Sen. Steve Ward hired a writer for his campaign.

Long-time Wally readers (that is those readers who have read the space for more than three weeks) know that in the past we've been critical of Ward as a writer.

The campaign, coming off its tepidly impressive showing in the CD 6 assembly, took an incremental step forward by getting someone to do actual writing for them that makes much more sense and is better organized than anything they've produced in the past.

Now if only that writer could do math as well.

A sharp Wally World reader forwarded to us a new fundraising email that the Ward campaign has put out that claims that "Steve Ward earned 43%; four other guys split 57% at GOP Assembly," referring to the CD 6 assembly that took place on the 17th.

"Steve Ward got 43% of the vote," the email says. "This means that Ted Harvey, Armstrong, Coffman and Pepito Castellanes, a protege of a Coffman supporter, split 57% of the vote."

Of course Coffman and Armstrong did not appear on the ballot at that assembly.

And by Ward's logic one can also argue that Ted Harvey got 53 percent of the vote while four other guys split 47 percent. Or that Castellanes came in third out of the five candidates running. Or that Coffman and Armstrong tied for last place. Or that Barak Obama did just as well at the assembly as Armstrong and Coffman did, even though they have outspent Obama infinitesimally. By Ward's logic if Obama petitions on to the ballot today and even spends one dollar, he'll win the race.

The Ward campaign justifies their logic like this: "No one voted for Steve trying to keep Ted Harvey off the ballot, but delegates were advised that a vote for Harvey might keep Steve off the ballot."

But by our reckoning Ward needed a rule change just to make the ballot in the first place. The week before the assembly Ward asked the executive committee of CD 6 to eliminate the "I abstain" option from the ballot for fear it would prevent him from getting the necessary 30 percent of the vote to make the ballot without petitioning on.

In all of our travels we never once heard Harvey supporters fear that Harvey wouldn't make the ballot if the "I abstain" option was kept on the ballot. In fact, Harvey could argue that because the Douglas County delegation, which includes over 200 votes, is fairly solid in their support of him, he's the true front-runner. Right now Harvey has better claim on that status than any of the other candidates.

Also included in the email was a picture of Arapahoe delegate Rick Spoor "flashing Mike Coffman's delegate voting credential while supporting Wil Armstrong," to emphasize that Coffman was a no-show at the assembly.

The truth is that Coffman and Armstrong ran a risk by appearing at the assembly if someone had nominated them from the floor. Either candidate would have been at risk in either declining the nomination or going forward and making a poor showing because they never planned on winning the assembly.

But the truth is just too weird for Ward.