Federal Judiciary

Botched Campaigns in Colorado -- By: David Harsanyi

If Colorado is a bellwether of national political fortunes, as many believe, then Republicans will be#...#well, they'll be screwed.

Unless some unlikely and unforeseen things happen, any chance of the GOP's retaking the governor's mansion in November was eradicated last Monday when erstwhile Republican Tom Tancredo announced that he would jump into the race on the Constitution party's ticket. That party's platform includes, among other, um, robust right-of-center positions, retaking the Panama Canal.

#ad#Tancredo had earlier issued an ultimatum to the ethically challenged Republican gubernatorial candidates, Dan Maes and Scott McInnis: If whichever of them won the August 10 primary was not, at that point, leading the Democratic candidate, Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, in the polls, he would step aside and let a GOP committee chose a stronger candidate. If the two did not accept Tancredo's ultimatum --and they didn't -- then he would enter the race himself as a third-party candidate. Of course, by not waiting until the primary was decided to launch his own candidacy, Tancredo has, in all probability, ensured that no credible candidate would risk his or her reputation wading into a three-way race.

The road to Tancredo's one-issue candidacy (the one issue being his ego) was paved by a tin-eared state GOP establishment that chose to bankroll a stale contender in a year begging for new faces and ideological earnestness. When one thinks of conservative renewal, one does not think of McInnis, a former six-term congressman whose lobbying, lawyering, and ethical tribulations (paying his wife for a campaign that did not exist, for instance) should have disqualified him long ago. Unsurprisingly, the most notable characteristic of McInnis's candidacy has been his miraculous talent for generating absolutely no excitement among conservatives.

As if these inherent flaws weren't enough, voters soon learned that McInnis had pocketed $300,000 for 'musings' on water policy he had written for an ersatz think tank backed by Republican donors. By 'written,' I mean plagiarized. And when McInnis attempted to shift culpability to an 82-year-old researcher -- whom he hadn't credited in the first place -- it simply reinforced the perception that the Republican old guard was not only ideologically weak but corrupt as well.

Once the GOP establishment had scared off any inspiring contenders, the alternative came in the form of an unknown self-proclaimed business whiz named Dan Maes. Even before McInnis imploded, Maes had secured the top line on the primary ballot at the GOP assembly in May on the strength of the protest vote. But apparently, an unknown candidate isn't by default a competent, chaste, or even conservative one. Maes is suspect on all three counts.

#page#Though Maes's pitch for office was rooted in his acumen on financial matters, it turns out he was pulling down less than the average journalist's yearly pay -- so, not good. Or put it this way: Through some dubious accounting (for which Maes paid the largest campaign-finance fine ever in Colorado), he put in for $42,000 in expenses, and that was his best payday in years.

Enter Tancredo. Exit Republican chances.

#ad#With a cache of impressive young conservative talent available in Colorado, it is difficult to comprehend how the GOP could have turned off the activist base so quickly. It takes a special kind of hubris to believe that everyone will always fall in line.

A similar dynamic seems to be at work in the Senate race. Many conservatives remain suspicious of Jane Norton -- former lieutenant governor, supporter of the contentious Referendum C tax increase, and sister-in-law of super-lobbyist Charlie Black. But, unexpectedly, it is upstart candidate Ken Buck, supported by Jim DeMint and the tea party, who has really started to struggle.

Buck, the Weld County district attorney, has stumbled since becoming the frontrunner, facing his own ethics questions and making one unforced error after another. Earlier this summer, Buck let loose a clumsy joke about being a candidate without 'high heels.' He was responding to Norton's statement that he wasn't 'man enough' to do his own negative campaigning, relying instead on ads by independent groups. The innocuous jab was transformed by Norton into an effective -- if unfair -- campaign issue: 'Ken Buck may think a woman's place is in the house. We know a woman's place is in the Senate.' (Oy vey.)

Then a tape emerged of Buck asking a Democratic operative if he could 'tell those dumba**es at the tea party to stop asking questions about birth certificates [i.e., Obama's] while I'm on the camera.' Right or wrong, the comment wasn't helpful to Buck's campaign. 

Then again, despite perceptions, the Princeton-educated lawyer and former Justice Department prosecutor is often less reflexively tea party and more nuanced on issues than Norton. What he isn't is hand-picked by the Republican establishment. That alone seems to be enough to hamstring a candidate in this state.

Either Norton or Buck still has a good shot at taking down whoever winds up being the Democratic candidate -- the primary contest is down to mealy-mouthed incumbent senator Michael Bennet and progressive challenger Andrew Romanoff -- but both have been needlessly battered.

The GOP started this election year with the clear upper hand in Colorado. But because of gratuitous infighting, dreadful party management, and incompetent candidates, it may end up losing two winnable races.

A bellwether? Probably not. A lesson? Yes: A dysfunctional relationship between grassroots conservatives and establishment Republicans can undo a sure thing in a hurry.

-- David Harsanyi is a columnist for the Denver Post.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on August 02, 2010 (boomark / email).