DENVER—Tom Tancredo loves to speak his mind. He’s relishing it in his run for Colorado’s governor.
Sometimes, he admits, he goes too far. Like his recent suggestion that Interstate 70 motorists pay tolls—anathema in this low-tax state.
“It’s not for everybody,” he argued. “You don’t have to go there.”
“You know, I jumped too fast, I need to give that more thought,” he said later.
The man best known for his illegal immigration stands drew gasps from a business crowd when he apologized if their lunch was cold. Half the wait staff and the kitchen staff usually leave when he walks into a room, he explained.
It’s a recurrent theme with Tancredo, who got thrown out of the White House for suggesting then-President George W. Bush was soft on illegal immigrants. He once recommended that the United States bomb Mecca if there is was a nuclear terrorist attack against the United States.
And yet it hasn’t hurt his third-party campaign atop the American Constitution Party ticket. Tancredo bolted the Republican Party after tea party candidate Dan Maes won the GOP’s gubernatorial nomination, arguing Maes is unelectable and that someone has to challenge Democrat and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.
Tancredo’s stock among voters and contributors has risen as Maes loses support following a series of campaign gaffes. Some polls have him nearly within striking distance of Hickenlooper, to date the prohibitive favorite.
Over the past two weeks, Tancredo collected $220,000 for a fundraising total of $682,000. Maes raised $22,000 for a total of $304,000.
Hickenlooper raised $387,000 from Sept. 30 to Oct. 13, bringing his total to $3.7 million.
Tancredo said much of his support comes from opponents of illegal immigration across the nation.
“They recognize that a lot of the play now is at the state level, and that the federal government is not going to get involved” in enforcing immigration laws, Tancredo said.
Tancredo’s ads against Hickenlooper have focused squarely on immigration. One unsavory ad cites the case of an illegal immigrant who drove into an Aurora ice cream shop, killing a 3-year-old boy. The boy’s father asks Hickenlooper how he can sleep at night.
As governor, Tancredo promises to push for an Arizona-style law that requires police to check immigration status. Hickenlooper vows to veto any such legislation.
Tancredo wants to require proof of citizenship to enroll in public schools. Hickenlooper opposes it. Tancredo wants limits on more federal stimulus spending. Hickenlooper points to money providing broadband access in rural areas and supports federal spending.
Tancredo has made a career out of rocking the boat on policy issues, beginning with education. He started out as a teacher in the Jefferson County school system and later became a real estate developer. In 1976, he was elected to the state Legislature, where he served two terms, driven by a desire to reform an education he saw as flawed because parents had no choice where their children went to school.
His education agenda earned him plaudits, and in 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed him a regional assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Education, where he served until 1992. His goal: Slash the number of department employees. He did it with vigor, cutting staff from 225 to 60.
He promises to use the same budget ax with Colorado’s 16 departments to confront a $1.1 billion budget shortfall next year.
In 1993, Tancredo became director of the Independence Institute, a private conservative think tank. He was elected to the U.S. House in 1998 and left in 2007 for a longshot run at the GOP presidential nomination.
Now Tancredo wants to bring back another notorious ad he ran during his presidential bid. The ad showed a man in a hooded sweat shirt with a backpack in a crowded mall, then the sound of an explosion, then clips of terrorist acts in Europe.
“I asked them to send me a copy because who knows, I might need it again,” he said.
