Statements made by Susan Daggett, wife of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, to undercover activists became the latest political football as Coloradans head to the polls on Tuesday.

Campaign officials for Joe O’Dea, Bennet’s Republican opponent, said statements made by Daggett about police reform and the scope of the Inflation Reduction Act affirm that Bennet is a “radical,” while Bennet’s campaign called the whole incident “despicable.”

Daggett, a law professor, suggested to activists wearing a hidden camera that calling the movement to reform police departments “defund the police” is not “smart,” but allocating some funding to mental health and other non-police interventions makes sense. At another point in the conversation, Daggett also suggested downplaying the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate provisions.   

The activists were from a group called Accuracy in Media, which describes itself as employing “citizen activism and investigative journalism to expose media bias, corruption, and public policy failings.”

The Bennet campaign called the interaction “despicable ambush theater.”

“This isn’t journalism,” Justin Lamorte, Bennet’s campaign manager, told Colorado Politics. “It’s disgusting that Joe O’Dea and his campaign are endorsing this tactic. Taking aim at a candidate’s wife is straight out of the Donald Trump playbook.” 

In the video, one of the activists asked Daggett if Democrats who say they don’t want to “defund the police” mean it or are they just trying to “placate” people.

“I think that, you know, Michael would say calling it ‘defund the police’ was probably not the smartest move at the outset because that’s not really what we’re talking about,” Daggett responded.

The O’Dea campaign said Daggett’s statement encapsulates the “national Democrat agenda” that Bennet embraces. 

“To be clear, the ‘it’ she’s referencing is the national Democrat agenda, which Bennet supports, to divest from law enforcement and correctional facilities across the nation. That’s unambiguous,” said Kyle Kohli, a spokesperson for the O’Dea campaign.

“Michael Bennet is another soft on crime radical who’s doing nothing to stem the tide of rising crime across America,” added Zack Roday, O’Dea’s campaign manager. “And, I’ll note, Ms. Daggett made it clear she was speaking on behalf of Senator Bennet’s approach to issues.”

In the video, Daggett added that the current political atmosphere is hyper-partisan and that anything that can become a wedge issue is.

“So, probably the smartest thing to do is to take the temperature down,” she said. 

“We’re talking about it for a half a second and let the temperatures come down, and then quietly allocate some funding to mental health, right, and to interventions that can help and maybe not call it police reform,” she said, adding, “There’s just strategic ways to do it that would be just as effective but, you know, not raise the flag.”

At another point in the video, Daggett also agreed with the activists’ assessment that “not raising the flag” was how Democrats approached the Inflation Reduction Act.  

“So many great things happened in that bill,” one of the activists said. 

“Yeah, so many climate things,” chimed in the other activist. 

Daggett replied: “Right, right. We don’t talk about it,” Daggett replied. “Just, just yeah.”