Re: Romanoff is tarring one of the good guys,” June 14 Dana Milbank column.
Dana Milbank got my name right — but that’s about it.
Milbank’s attempt to malign my character consumed 13 paragraphs in Monday’s Denver Post. Nearly every paragraph is false or misleading.
The Post’s decision to publish this work of fiction is disappointing enough. What makes matters worse is Milbank’s decision to discard the evidence he made a pretense of seeking.
Milbank begins by recalling a “fierce” clash between the editor and publisher of our college newspaper. I was the editor, 24 years ago, but I didn’t remember refusing to speak with the publisher. So I tracked down the publisher to refresh my memory. He couldn’t remember that, either — as he had already told Milbank, to no avail.
The passage of time has not softened Milbank’s contempt for me or for reality. “There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference,” he declares, in Colorado’s Democratic Senate primary. The truth: My opponent and I differ on virtually every major area of public policy, including health care, the economy, campaign finance, energy and the environment.
Milbank accuses me of calling my opponent corrupt. I have never done so. In the press conference Milbank cites, I explicitly refused a reporter’s invitation to make that charge.
Milbank accuses me of aiming to embarrass the president by confirming a call and a message I received from the White House. As Milbank surely knows, I declined to comment on this matter precisely because I did not and do not want to politicize it. The same, sadly, cannot be said of my opponent, whose press secretary spent the weekend peddling Milbank’s calumny.
The good news — and there is some here — is that the voters of my state aren’t fooled by such tricks. Despite the opposition of Washington’s powerbrokers and party bosses, I won the Democratic convention by 21 points and have moved into a dead heat with the leading Republican candidate. (My opponent trails the GOP frontrunner by six points.) When a grassroots campaign like ours wins a race like this without a dime of corporate cash, our victory will send a seismic shock to the U.S. Senate, which needs one. Milbank got that part right.
Andrew Romanoff, the former speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives, is running for the U.S. Senate.
