Ken Buck apparently forgot to read his political obituary.
The Weld County district attorney’s Senate bid was supposed to be deader than Abe Vigoda after Jane Norton entered the race last fall. He was supposed to be scared off by her money and her big-name endorsements.
I know this because I wrote it in a column last September. (Don’t they get The Sunday Post up in Greeley?) But, like Vigoda, Buck’s campaign is very much alive.
Last fall, I likened the Republican contest for Colorado’s U.S. Senate seat to a NASCAR race in a mud bog with lots of shiny race cars revving their engines but no one gaining any real traction. And that much was true.
But the race was about to get a new driver: former Lt. Gov. Norton. An attractive candidate with big-name backers, her entrance in the race would be a game-changer for the crowded primary field, I wrote. She’d clear the field as she sucked all the money and air out of the race.
But only Ryan Frazier, an Aurora city councilman, bailed, eventually diverting his Senate run to take on Ed Perlmutter in the 7th Congressional District.
Buck did drop out for about, oh, 12 hours, but he was persuaded to stay in by some party activists who couldn’t shake the idea that the Norton-as-presumptive-nominee coup was hatched back in Washington by party brass.
Now, less than four months before the primary, not only is Buck still in, he also appears to be a serious contender. He edged out Norton in a straw poll at the party caucuses last month, and then last week Norton announced she would skip the state GOP assembly next month, where she would have needed just 30 percent of the vote to make it onto the August primary ballot. Instead, she’ll petition her way onto the ballot.
Even though Norton has raised more cash — including an impressive $800,000 in the first quarter compared to Buck’s $218,000 (which included a $100,000 personal loan) — she’s also spent more.
So as of last week, when the race began to attract national attention and, fortunately for Buck, some national money, Norton had only about $200,000 more in the bank than Buck did.
When pundits were dismissing his bid, Buck was running a shoestring campaign and pressing the flesh with Republican activists from Grand Junction to Golden. Former Sen. Wayne Allard advised him to visit every county in the state, just as Allard did when he ran for Senate. By last fall, Buck already had visited all 64 counties, but just kept hitting the rubber chicken and Rotary circuit.
By playing to the party activists, he is winning over the folks most energized by politics right now. He’s the self-proclaimed Tea Party candidate, and those Republican Tea Partiers who are mad as hell about government spending and health care reform will storm the state GOP assembly next month and, without Norton on the ballot, will most likely fire up the Buck bandwagon. (Former state Sen. Tom Wiens and businessman Cleve Tidwell also are running.)
Coloradans are tiring of politics as usual, and Norton, with her long list of impressive endorsements, is seen as the insider in the race, even though she’s been out of the game for three years. The same dynamic is playing out on the Democratic side of the race, where incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet is actually trying to run as an outsider.
If nothing else, it’s refreshing to see that the retail politics Buck has engaged in can still pay off in Colorado, especially after witnessing the massive infrastructure of donors and networks Democrats created in recent years to help take over Colorado politics.
But can handshakes propel Buck to victory? His fundraising is still a liability, even though a third-party group has begun to buy TV spots for him.
Back in September, I wrote that this race was Norton’s to lose. And perhaps she’s doing just that.
Then again, I’m the guy who wrote Buck’s political obituary.
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
