DENVER—Colorado Republican Ken Buck tried Saturday to steer the state’s tight Senate contest away from social issues and toward the economy as he attempts to unseat Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet.
Buck stuck to his hard-right positions on abortion and gay marriage in his seventh and final debate with Bennet. However, Buck insisted that voters care more about unemployment and government spending.
“We get caught on these social issues when the voters want to know about jobs, they want to know about unemployment, they want to know about spending,” Buck said when asked to elaborate on his opposition to abortion rights, even in cases of rape and incest.
Bennet and the Democrats have swiped at Buck for his social conservatism. Buck repeated his opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage on Saturday, but he punched back at Democratic efforts to highlight those position instead of his promises to cut taxes and federal spending.
But the abortion question didn’t go away. At one point in the KCNC-TV debate, also aired on C-SPAN, the candidates were allowed to grill each other, and Bennet laid into Buck for opposing abortion rights.
“Who’s going to jail?” Bennet asked, referring to women seeking abortions.
Buck replied, “I don’t think abortion’s going to be criminalized anytime soon. … You have tried once again to take this debate off-topic. Once again, I am going to focus my campaign on the issues Colorado voters care about.”
When the debate turned to the economy, Buck seemed more comfortable. He accused Bennet of overspending in Washington but coming home to Colorado and talking up the need to cut the national deficit. Buck pointed out that the debt has risen $3 trillion since Bennet was appointed to the job last year.
“He refuses to take responsibility for that $3 trillion dollars in debt,” Bennet said. “He’s been in Washington, D.C., and he hasn’t done anything to clean it up.”
Bennet fired back, “Quite the contrary.” He said that he has backed fiscally sound measures, including the health care overhaul. Bennet described Medicare cuts included in that new law as “the heart” of the plan.
Buck also pressed Bennet to clarify his position on a union-organizing bill on which the Democrat has given only vague answers. Bennet said that he opposes the main thrust of the Employee Free Choice Act—allowing a majority of employees to form a union by signing a card instead of holding a secret ballot vote.
“I think that the secret ballot rules shouldn’t change,” Bennet said. It was Bennet’s most specific position to date on that bill, which has passed the House but stalled in the Senate.
Bennet and Buck both leave Denver this week to rally support in the closing days of the campaign.
