August 25, 2009 04:59 AM UTC

Beauprez's Out, Which Means Norton's In

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• by: Colorado Pols

From Politics West:

Former Congressman Bob Beauprez will not run for the U.S. Senate, he said in an email to supporters this afternoon.

“Having been presented with the potential to serve in the United States Senate, Claudia and I considered it very carefully. However after significant reflection, I will not be a candidate for the Senate in 2010,” he wrote.

His decision leaves four GOP candidates: Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier, Evergreen businessman Dan Maes and Cleve Tidwell of Denver. Last week, the Denver Post reported that former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton is also looking at entering the GOP field.

Let’s face it: Beauprez isn’t running because he looked around, considered various staffers, and finally realized what we’d been saying for a long time. He. Can’t. Win.

It’s no secret that Beauprez has been wanting to get back into politics since 2006, but he’s still way too much damaged goods.

Meanwhile, Jane Norton’s Senate bid is basically a lock at this point. Everybody’s talking about it. Democrats we’ve talked to this evening seem awfully confident, like they know something we don’t know. That’s likely to be the case for a majority of Colorado voters, a good percentage of whom probably think her first name is Gale. Though to be fair, voters could think her first name was “Ken,” and it’s still a positive for her. Name ID is name ID, especially in a GOP primary–and general election–where nobody knows anybody.

And for all the buzz about “salvation,” we kind of doubt Ken Buck sees it that way–and he’s probably the one extant candidate we’re not writing off yet.

UPDATE: We omitted Cleve Tidwell from our original post. We regret the error. Deeply.