Save the fireworks for the Fourth of July. The highly charged and often bitter primary race between Bob Beauprez and Marc Holtzman ended Thursday and on a quiet note, with the state Supreme Court refusing to breathe life into Holtzman’s quixotic candidacy.
For the past few weeks the Holtzman campaign has been kept alive by TV ad buys and legal maneuvering, but the high court was his final stop in the quest to petition his way onto the Aug. 8 GOP ballot.
His exit from the race now sets up what many expect to be a bruising and expensive run for governor between Beauprez and Democrat Bill Ritter, two men with starkly different views on how to run the state and Colorado’s budget.
Holtzman launched an improbable bid more than a year ago but he certainly made his presence felt, casting himself as a conservative outsider to Colorado’s politics-as-usual political machinery. His campaign started to sputter last year when he positioned himself as the loud lead opponent of Referendum C, an irresponsible bid to ingratiate himself to ultra-conservative Republicans. Voters ignored his entreaties and approved the fiscal reform measure, and in any event, Beauprez matched his pandering by opposing C himself.
Party loyalists not only gave Beauprez top line at the state assembly last month, but Holtzman failed to reach the 30 percent threshold needed to get his name on the primary ballot. When Secretary of State Gigi Dennis ruled he hadn’t collected enough valid signatures to petition onto the ballot, he turned to the courts.
The party brass, from Gov. Bill Owens to money man Bruce Benson to party chief Bob Martinez, all tried to make the “Holtzman problem” go away over the past year, but an impressive bankroll (he contributed more than half a million to his campaign) and Rolodex kept him viable for a time.
It’s oversimplification to say Holtzman’s presence in the race pulled Beauprez more to the right, because the congressman is already there. But it did force Beauprez’s hand, namely putting him on the record as an opponent of Referendum C.
His campaign handlers now will try to push Beauprez to the middle, where statewide campaigns generally are won in Colorado. But it may be difficult for the congressman to run from his record, which is to the right of the political spectrum and most Coloradans. (Beauprez abandoned Gov. Owens and many other party leaders to oppose Referendum C.)
Holtzman certainly added some color and flair, and a certain mischievous charm to this year’s gubernatorial race, but now the table has been set. Beauprez or Ritter?
