Ken Buck doesn’t appear particularly fearsome from across the table at Starbucks. He’s a big fellow — played football at Princeton — but hardly loud or flamboyant. Yet the Weld County district attorney has so rattled the campaign of former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton in their contest for the U.S. Senate nomination that she pulled out of today’s state party assembly last month and has been launching attacks ever since that would embarrass many a contestant for high- school class president.
Buck is a “Republican insider” and “the ultimate good ol’ boy — trying to keep the ‘back room’ all to himself,” Norton’s campaign has charged — an odd thing to say about a very open gathering that she herself decided to sidestep. And an even odder thing to say about Buck.
Buck is no Rand Paul, of course: an outsider battering at the citadel of the political establishment. But neither is Norton. And a woman who boasts as her campaign chairs such names as Bill Owens, Bill Armstrong, Hank Brown and Bob Beauprez, and who was the state chair for John McCain’s presidential bid, risks self-parody when trying to stick the insider label on an under- funded rival.
Norton wasn’t about to be trounced at the state assembly because Buck is pulling strings. Something far more interesting is going on. Buck finds himself buoyed by the wave of reaction against grotesque levels of government spending and meddling. While Norton has a problem with the activist base, he is their unexpected darling.
So will Buck be another insurgent to defeat the party honchos’ favorite come primary day in August? And if he does, would he be a formidable candidate in the fall, or a right-wing lightning rod whose positions the Democrats relish attacking?
The easiest way to address the second question is to point out that Buck is not right wing. He’s a conservative whose positions are indistinguishable from Norton’s on almost every topic, beyond a few wrinkles. (She’d abolish the Department of Education, for example; he’d merely spin off some of its responsibilities to the states).
Meanwhile, he’s been smart enough to keep his distance from the wilder elements of the raucous right.
At the Douglas County assembly a few weeks ago, for example, Buck was asked whether he would “support the Republican Party to demand that President Obama show his citizenship credentials.” Despite loud applause for the question, Buck simply declared, “Look, I have no idea what his citizenship credentials look like or what the other folks are saying, but I’ve got to tell you, to me it’s a dead issue. President Obama needs to be out of office in 2012.”
Even on immigration, the issue on which Buck developed a hard-edged reputation as prosecutor by seizing tax returns, his actual position is more complex than sealing borders. He’d also push to expedite the path for legal immigrants to become citizens and the process by which foreigners obtain work permits. And he foresees many of those who now hold jobs leaving the country, getting permits in fairly short order and returning to work.
So why is he the darling of Tea Party types? An intangible credibility, I’m guessing. They seem to believe he’s actually serious when he says he will fight lavish government spending and meddling in the economy. And the reason for their faith goes deeper than the fact that Norton supported Referendum C (as I did) while Buck opposed it.
At the DougCo assembly, Buck pitched himself as a modern-day Horatio at the Bridge, prepared to filibuster Obama initiatives and to defy his own party if necessary.
By contrast, Norton allowed herself to be goaded by a disparaging reference about McCain into a defense not only of the Arizona senator but Republican candidates in general, including Rudy Giuliani.
Hardly the way to polish her anti-establishment credentials.
It’s a long way until August, and longer still to November, and Buck could easily founder for lack of funds or a neophyte’s gaffe. But on this day, however improbably, momentum is on his side.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
