As Michael Bennet embarks upon a door-to-door campaign to convince voters he’s the best politician to represent Colorado in the U.S. Senate, questions about Andrew Romanoff’s decision to turn down a job offer from the White House seem to have been quelled—at least for now.

While Romanoff has emerged from that dust-up practically unscathed, he hasn’t escaped the critical pen of The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank.

Milbank remembers Romanoff as the “talented but prickly junior” editor of his college paper who “clashed so fiercely with the newspaper’s business staff that he and the publisher communicated only through memos,” wasting time on “internal squabbles.”

Milbank, who was a freshman at the time, chides Romanoff for casting his fellow Democrat, Bennet, as a Washington insider.

“The Senate needs a shock,” Milbank writes. “But accusing one of the few good ones in the chamber of insider dealing and corruption isn’t a shock—it’s politics at its most cynical.”

Meanwhile, The Denver Post digs into the tax records of the two candidates, showing that Romanoff’s humble pay stands in stark contrast to Bennet’s hefty wallet. Bennet, a Yale Law graduate, held a series of legal jobs, reaching a salary of $6.5 million in 2003.

Romanoff, a Yale undergrad who put himself through the University of Denver Law School while moonlighting as a Colorado lawmaker, earned less than $36,000 in his last year as House speaker in 2008. Romanoff’s highest earnings were $54,000 a year as a college instructor.

A U.S. senator earns $174,000 annually.