White House: Sure We Wanted To Get Romanoff Out Of The Colorado Senate Primary

Romanoff really wanted to work for Obama but Obama wasn't so interested in him...until Romanoff decided to run for the Senate.

This is the statement on the White House website.

Andrew Romanoff applied for a position at USAID during the Presidential transition. He filed this application through the Transition on-line process. After the new administration took office, he followed up by phone with White House personnel.

Jim Messina called and emailed Romanoff last September to see if he was still interested in a position at USAID, or if, as had been reported, he was running for the US Senate. Months earlier, the President had endorsed Senator Michael Bennet for the Colorado seat, and Messina wanted to determine if it was possible to avoid a costly battle between two supporters.

But Romanoff said that he was committed to the Senate race and no longer interested in working for the Administration, and that ended the discussion. As Mr. Romanoff has stated, there was no offer of a job.

Apparently the best way to get your resume to the top of the White House hiring list is to file for a Democratic Senate primary.

It's also a good way for the White House to potentially run afoul of several federal statutes.

Remember when the 'firing' of US Attorneys, who serve at the pleasure of the President, was supposed to be something close to an impeachable offense? But offering jobs to muck up primary elections is what? A 'nontroversy' (to borrow a phrase)?

Not surprisingly, team Obama's defense is, everyone does it! Well, not everyone, they say Ronald Regan did. Once. 30 years ago. Except, he didn't.

In efforts to defend President Obama from the controversies involving Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Penn., and former Colorado speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff -- Democratic Senate candidates whom the White House made efforts to coax out of their challenges to incumbent Democratic Senators -- the White House and its allies have argued that a similar offer was made by President Ronald Reagan's White House when trying to coax a weak incumbent out of his re-election race.

But the Reagan White House official involved tells ABC News that that's not true, and he’s supported by press accounts at the time.

The weak incumbent Sen. S.I. Hayakawa did eventually drop out of the race and never got a job with the administration.

So much for that "defense".

Aside from the fact Team Obama is wrong on its analogy to the Reagan situation, when exactly did "Hope and Change" become "But Reagan did it?" Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of areas in which I wish Obama would act more like Reagan but I don't think that's the message he ran on 2 years ago.

If nothing else I guess congratulations are in order, the White House has managed to knock Sestak out of the news.

Heck of a job Gibbsy! Heck of a job!

posted by DrewM. at 11:47 AM

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