GRAND JUNCTION — We’ve had our laughs this campaign season. Now things are going to get ugly.
What I mean is, we had our kicks. Now we can expect some low blows.
I knew all that before I came to Club 20’s big debate day and night — the real kickoff to the state’s general election season — but it grew clearer and clearer as the night went on.
For months now, the gubernatorial sideshow has stolen most of the headlines. The goofiness is irresistible, but it is, remember, a sideshow.
And it was at its side-showy best Saturday night when Tom Tancredo, left out of the debate as a third-party candidate, held a news conference outside the convention hall. This won’t surprise you, but Tancredo called Dan Maes a “joke” and a “fraud,” and he called John Hickenlooper a “liberal,” which, I guess, in these Republican parts is seen as not so much different.
But in a race where the outcome is pretty much determined, you couldn’t take the Tancredo show seriously. Just as you couldn’t take a debate without Tancredo, which was predictably one-sided for Hickenlooper, very seriously.
But then came the main event, the U.S. Senate race, and you immediately sensed that the stakes had changed.
I noticed it first when the normally sedate — and in a debate setting, often seemingly sedated — Ken Buck raised his voice.
Or maybe it was when the ever- judicious Michael Bennet started pounding the podium.
Don’t get me wrong. The debate wasn’t that hard-hitting. But it was a sign.
It isn’t the players themselves who have changed since the primaries, which were, of course, quite competitive on both sides. It’s the game that has changed.
If Buck and Bennet are going to slam each other in TV ads — Buck’s negative ads will come, of course, courtesy of out-of-state, third-party money — they’re going to have to play the same game when they meet up for debate.
The debate schedule isn’t entirely set, but you might want to tune in for the next one.
The most contentious topic turned out to be the Bennet ad on Buck branding him as extremist — a Sharron Angle in cowboy boots, a Rand Paul with white hair.
That’s not surprising because the race may turn on whether Buck is able to fight off an ad that uses Buck’s own words.
Buck says that in much of the ad he was taken out of context — just as Bennet says he was taken out of context about the “immoral” $13 trillion federal deficit.
In this debate, Bennet says that words matter. And they were off.
The campaign ad came up during the cross-examination part of the debate — when the candidates got to go directly at each other — and go at each other they went.
If you look at the issues — Social Security, the Department of Education, student loans — these are issues where there are real differences between the candidates and the parties. This is not the primary, where you vote over the margins. This is Democrat vs. Republican, left vs. right, in a state that isn’t always sure which way it goes.
Certainly the ad has hurt Buck, who asked Bennet if he stood behind the words in it.
Instead of just saying he did, Bennet tried to debate each topic. Buck cut him off. Bennet tried again, in what you might call a filibuster.
And then ever-cautious Bennet handed Buck a gift.
Buck asked whether Bennet supported a bill that had — yes — an earmark, and not just an earmark, but one that put in $1.5 million to pay for a Pennsylvania airport named after the late Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., an airport, according to Buck, that serves fewer than 20 people a day.
“I’m sure that’s true,” Bennet said. “It was certainly not of interest to me.”
The crowd caught the gaffe immediately. Bennet didn’t care about government pork? Is that really what he said?
Buck shot back, “$1.5 million is certainly of interest to all of us.”
Bennet tried to come back. He said that he misunderstood the question, which he thought was a shot at Murtha, who, of course, was a major pork procurer and who was, for a time, in Nancy Pelosi territory as a Republican talking point.
Then Buck gets off his best line: “I will not use your misstatement in a commercial.”
Bennet then came back with his own, asking if Buck could say the same thing about Karl Rove, who is putting together third-party ads that take on Bennet.
All the players are coming out to play. As I said, it’s going to get ugly. And then it’s going to get uglier.
All that’s at stake is the balance in the U.S. Senate, which may depend on the outcome of this race.
Which will almost certainly depend not on the outcome of debates, but on who wins the battle of the TV ads. It’s definitely the main event.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
