WRAY — In a 629-mile, 11-stop schlep to the Eastern Plains, GOP Senate hopeful Jane Norton didn’t leave a convenience store or a coffee house without tarring her Republican opponent Ken Buck as a liberal spender tied to “shady” outside political groups.
In plastic-tabled Mexican food joints and in front of a McDonald’s Play Land, Norton called Buck’s character into question — saying that taxpayers are footing the bill while he simultaneously works as Weld County district attorney and runs for higher office — and touted her statewide “electability.”
“I’m better because I’m the true conservative: I took a leave of absence to run this race,” she said to a gathering in a coffee shop here.
Behind the scenes, her new campaign manager, state Sen. Josh Penry, added to the attacks — both electronically and in phone calls with reporters.
“What do Ken Buck and a liberal southern Senator who saved Obamacare have in common?” one e-mail read, referring to a Washington group that helped both Buck and, by attacking her opponent, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark. “A lot it turns out.”
Another e-mail called out the increase in spending at Buck’s Weld County district attorney office — a rise he attributes to the county’s 40 percent growth and the new courtrooms, built by the state, that he had to staff. Penry summed it up in one sentence: “The message is, it’s the good ol’ boys against Jane Norton.”
Welcome to the new Jane Norton campaign for U.S. Senate. Her edges are sharpened. She’s asking for money everywhere. And she takes every opportunity on even the smallest of stump stops to whack her chief GOP opponent.
It’s a Norton, observers say, acting like she is actually in the middle of a heated primary.
“She has needed to do a better job of presenting her own conservative credentials,” said former Gov. Bill Owens, a supporter.
The race gets serious
Since last year, ambitious Republicans have been lining up to run against appointed Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet in November. But only in the past couple of months has it become clear just how serious an opponent Buck is for Norton, who has outpaced him in fundraising by hundreds of thousands of dollars and has support from Republican power brokers in Washington, D.C., and Colorado.
In March, Buck edged Norton in a Republican statewide straw poll. A few weeks later, Norton decided to forgo Saturday’s state GOP assembly — where she would have needed 30 percent of the vote among 3,500 delegates to qualify for the primary ballot — and petition her way onto the ballot instead.
That decision irked the party faithful.
Buck’s campaign surged.
Almost overnight, Buck was cast nationally in blogs and on cable news as an underdog fighting a big-money, establishment Republican.
He picked up an endorsement from Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., which likely means hundreds of thousands of dollars in PAC money from Tea Party groups across the country.
Several other outside organizations, including Americans for Job Security, have spent hundreds of thousands for commercials and mail campaigns on Buck’s behalf.
Within a week of the DeMint endorsement, Norton fired her campaign manager and replaced him with 34-year-old Penry, the former state Senate minority leader beloved among the party base.
“She’s acting like she has competition, and that’s probably appropriate,” said Katy Atkinson, a Colorado Republican strategist.
Norton is also trying to get out and meet hundreds of voters as she gathers petition signatures before the May 27 deadline.
Relying on new staff
Though she says she relishes the meet-and-greets, she is seemingly still getting on her feet.
On her Eastern Plains trip, she regularly turned to staff or prominent volunteers, such as former state Sen. Mark Hillman, to help her through questions from voters.
At the Wray coffee shop, Norton was asked why she was a better candidate than Buck.
“I’m true to conservative principles, and we need people who will have broader appeal,” she said, glancing at staffer Cinamon Watson, sitting at a table nearby. “Cinamon, what else?”
In a telephone town hall later that day, Norton crouched in a Burlington motel room and took questions from more than 2,000 people who listened in. After responding, she often asked Penry — who was on the line from Denver — whether he could add anything.
The simmering back-and-forth playing out in Colorado is just a part of a national story line among Republicans running for office in a handful of states where so-called Tea Party candidates are engaged in competitive races with traditional Republican party picks.
What’s unclear this early in Colorado, however, is whether the so-called underdog attention — and cash — that Buck is reaping will be enough to thwart Norton, the former lieutenant governor.
For his part, Buck is no stranger to taking swings at Norton for traversing to D.C. fundraisers and for her support for Referendum C, a five-year timeout from TABOR revenue limits, while she served with Owens.
At a gathering in Edwards last week, Buck offered one of his favorite lines: “I have no friends in Washington now. And I’ll have no friends when I leave D.C.”
Scorched-earth risks
Norton’s decision to take the fight to Buck — driven mostly by her revamped campaign team — carries some risk.
First off, taking swings at Buck is not something that comes to her naturally. On the stump, she has quoted Bible verses and Ronald Reagan when talking about running a positive campaign and not beating up other Republicans.
Even Tuesday, in a radio interview, she began trashing Buck — and then retreated.
“Give me a break about this Ken Buck thing, talk about the insider. . . . He has more D.C. money pouring into him and his campaign than any of the other guys in this race,” she said, and then paused and changed course. “We shouldn’t be killing each other. We should be united as a conservative front.”
Plus, observers say that scorching the earth within the same tent can also spook party loyalists and donors.
“There is a line that a candidate should not cross, and every campaign has to figure out what that line is,” said state GOP chair Dick Wadhams.
“I implore the campaigns to think about that. I’ve never met a candidate whose ambition is to be just the Republican nominee.”
Allison Sherry: 303-954-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com
