Oh, thank you Colorado, for making this election season just a little bit fun (via TPM).
Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Maes on Tuesday backed away from a claim that, as a police officer 25 years ago, he worked "undercover" with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
Maes previously said he was fired as a police officer in Liberal, Kan., after working undercover with the KBI in a gambling and drug probe.
A statement he wrote on his campaign website that was later removed said: "At one point in my 2 years there I was place (sic) undercover by the Kansas Bureau of Investigations (sic) to gather information inside a bookmaking ring that was also allegedly selling drugs. I got too close to some significant people in the community who were involved in these activities and abruptly was dismissed from my position.
I was blindsided and stunned to say the least."
So he said on his Web site that we was "undercover" in a "bookmaking ring" that was involved in selling drugs. But powerful interests intervened and forced him out of the investigation. The stuff of crime novels. Which might actually be where Maes got the story.
"Some people are probably taking that a little too literally," he said. "I was a city police officer providing information to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation."
....
So was he really working "undercover"?
"Those comments might have been incorrect comments," Maes said.
The KBI says it "has no record of Maes working with the agency during his stint as a police officer from 1983 to 1985." Call it the Mark Kirk school of politics in "enhanced" personal history.