September 10, 2007 07:36 PM UTC

Delta County Commissioner to Challenge Schaffer

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Grand Junction Sentinel reports:

After several weeks testing the waters, Delta County Commissioner Wayne Wolf is preparing to take on fellow Republican Bob Schaffer for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate.

Wolf is planning an announcement tour this week, he said Saturday during the Club 20 fall meeting in Grand Junction.

Colorado GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams told him “you really need to look at the reality of this,” Wolf said.

Wolf’s bid would make him the only Western Slope resident not currently in Congress to seek federal office in 2008, and he acknowledged his bid is a “huge undertaking.”

He wants to move ahead because, he said, federal officials don’t really understand the burden they’re placing on local governments with mandates such as expensive storm-sewer requirements that are set without federal funding.

Those officials might be sympathetic with local government problems, “but they don’t understand.”

Wolf, 56, is serving his second term on the Delta County Commission and is a fifth-generation rancher…

Seems like an insurgent bid to us. This is a name that has never surfaced in our many discussions of potential challengers for the GOP Senate nomination, and as desperate as many Republicans are for an alternative to Bob Schaffer, it’s tough to imagine such a relative unknown posing a serious threat–to Schaffer or Democrat Mark Udall. But stranger things have happened…