The Democratic Party’s so-called unity rally on the steps of the Capitol was the expected dog-and-pony show. Michael Bennet and Andrew Romanoff didn’t hug, but they did frequently shake hands. It was almost as if, you know, they actually liked each other.
Romanoff was funny, and Bennet’s little girls were cute. Everyone smiled for the cameras, fully aware that the hard truth about hard-fought primaries in either party is that most voters tend to forgive and forget once the red-vs.-blue juices start flowing.
In fact, the most striking thing about the Democratic event was knowing that the state Republicans can’t have one of their own.
It’s not that they don’t want to have one. It’s that, as Democratic National Committee chairman Tim Kaine said, they simply can’t have one.
This is not hard to understand. It can be explained in two words: Dan Maes.
You can be sure that Ken Buck, who is running against Bennet for the U.S. Senate seat, doesn’t want to run, or stand, anywhere near Maes. Buck put it this way to a reporter when asked about Maes and his theory on a U.N. bike-sharing agenda: “I don’t have to distance myself from anything. I am who I am. I haven’t said those things. Those radical statements aren’t attributed to me.”
The question isn’t whether Buck said them. It’s how often he’ll be asked to react to whatever radical statement Maes makes next.
Let’s take Maes’ latest adventure, which is chronicled in today’s paper by The Post’s Chris Osher and is one more embarrassment for the 195,000 Republicans who nominated Maes to be their candidate for governor.
Former Greenwood Village Mayor Freda Poundstone says she gave Maes “more than $300” after he told her he was behind in his mortgage payments. Maes denies the story, saying his trip to the ATM with Poundstone (no word on the mileage to or from the bank) was to get a campaign contribution, presumably in unmarked twenties.
Unfortunately, the campaign contribution does not show up anywhere in the campaign records. Maes, stumped by this incongruity, said to ask his campaign treasurer. The treasurer, who also happens to be Maes’ wife, didn’t return repeated phone calls. Maybe the phone is out because Poundstone — now a Tom Tancredo supporter — wasn’t around to pay the bill.
And as if the story were not strange enough, Poundstone challenged Maes to a lie-detector test to see who’s telling the truth. Maes has not, to this point, blamed the U.N., but I’m thinking whether or not there’s a conspiracy, it may be the IRS he has to worry about.
The Maes stories won’t end here, of course. And it isn’t just Maes who must worry Buck. He also is tied — and to a far greater degree — to the ex-for-now-Republican Tancredo, who is still in the race against Maes and a delighted John Hickenlooper.
You may remember when Buck had to distance himself from Tancredo’s Obama-is-a-greater-threat-to- America-than-al-Qaeda speech, which Tancredo happened to make at a Buck rally.
What we know for sure is that if Tancredo stays in the governor’s race on the American Constitution Party ticket, he will say ever more outrageous things. To get an outrageous quote from Tancredo, all it requires is that you ask him a question.
That’s how you got to Tancredo’s suggestion that it might be a good idea someday to bomb Mecca. For Buck, the big issue is not a bomb but what you might call friendly fire.
He’s already seeing the issue of guilt by association. The lead story Thursday on the influential Politico website was about whether “offbeat candidates” will hurt Republicans.
There were four candidates pictured. One, suitably, was Maes. Another was Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, who has said so many strange things that she hides from any reporter who might ask about them.
Another was Kentucky’s Rand Paul, who has been fighting off a GQ story that he tied up a friend back in his college days, forced her to smoke dope and took her to a creek to worship “Aqua Buddha.”
According to a Washington Post update, the woman involved said the story was not nearly so complicated. It was little more than a college prank, she said, in which, yes, she was eventually driven to a creek where Paul and friends “made me worship Aqua Buddha.”
The fourth person pictured in the Politico group was Ken Buck. I’m not sure how he got there, but he doesn’t belong. He’s not, as they say, “offbeat,” although he does tend to go a little off point.
He did make some hard-right comments in the primary campaign against Jane Norton that Democrats will use against him. His high-heels quote will stick with him until at least November.
But in the ranks of Colorado Republican/Constitution Party politics this season, Buck is as normal as a late-afternoon thunderstorm.
If you want offbeat, just wait for the Maes-vs.-Tancredo-vs.-Hickenlooper debates this fall. You bring the videocam. I’ll bring the polygraph.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
