How NOT to make friends and influence people, Colorado campaign version.

Friday, Pro15, the advocacy organization that bills itself as the voice of northeastern Colorado, held one of the last debates on the calendar for the two major party candidates for governor, in Greeley, in the heart of Colorado farm country.

One thing you need to know about Pro15: The 15 counties that it represents stretch from Larimer to Sedgwick along the Colorado-Wyoming border and as far south as Lincoln and Cheyenne. Out of those 15, only two – Adams and Arapahoe – have more Democrats than Republicans. You could say the area is Republican-friendly, and in all likelihood, you’d want to keep those folks on your side.

Or not.

During Friday’s candidates’ forum in Greeley, everything was going pretty well. The candidates, which in addition to the governor included the major party challengers for attorney general and treasurer, were civil to each other, engaged in a discussion of important issues and largely avoided mean-spirited attacks.

And then… Jerrod Dobkin, communications director for Republican gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton, replied to a tweet during the governor forum. Labeled “LEAKED NOTES from @jaredpolis” (only not really), he sent out a picture of scrawled words on notepaper saying: “Pretend to care about rural Colorado.”

It was in response to a photo evidently shot during the forum of Democratic candidate Jared Polis, who had some notes in front of him during the event. The photo was tweeted by Stapleton campaign manager Michael Fortney, who captioned the photo: “When he decides to show up in Rural Colorado @jaredpolis needs to read from notes.”

Dobkin’s tweet went over like a lead balloon with Pro15’s executive director, Cathy Shull.

She was sufficiently annoyed that when the forum ended, she immediately went to the microphone to ask Dobkin to take it down, although she didn’t call him out by name. She later repeated the request on Twitter, to no avail. “This isn’t what we’re about,” she said in the reply.

“We’ve been more than fair” with the Stapleton campaign, Shull told Colorado Politics, adding that the tweet violated the spirit of bipartisanship the group has been trying to promote for its event.

It could lead one to ask whether the Stapleton campaign knows that it’s generally not a good idea to offend an event sponsor, especially in one of the most solidly Republican areas of the state.

This kind of thing makes Capitol M look forward to the end of the silly season and the start of the legislative session.

Speaking of which….

Capitol M has taken to using visual aids when talking with various groups. The current favorite is the envelope (growing into a box) of mailers from Senate District 22, Capitol M’s home district in Lakewood. As of this week, it’s at 35. And while that may sound impressive, it’s peanuts, peanuts, I tell ya, to what’s going in Senate District 24, in Adams County. A Capitol M source advised that the count there is up to 60.

That’s a lot of peanuts.