What do these names have in common? They are all Colorado residents who have run for President of the United States. Jerry Lanser is a small business owner from Longmont who is running for President as a Republican and is apparently heading to Iowa this weekend to campaign. He even thinks people are going to be paying attention to him. From his website, www.JLanser.com
I believe the 2012 election is probably the last reasonable chance we have to get our budget under control. I am willing, for the sake of those grandchildren, to run for the job of President of the United States on a platform focused on growing our economy and reestablishing a government that operates on a balanced budget. I am willing to set the baseline for all other candidates by making specific proposals which you can view on the specifics page, with the full realization that this will make me the lightning rod for every special interest group in the country. [Pols emphasis]
"Lightning rod?" Uh, sure. If putting a broomstick on your roof works the same as a lightning rod. But before you get concerned that he might be misleading himself, Lanser wants you to know that he's only going to continue to run for President if a magical unicorn delivers a giant bag of cash to his campaign:
I will only run if there is enough financial support to run a credible campaign. I will not borrow. I will not mail you a plea for money every month. I expect that most contributions will be small ones from fellow Americans who know the sacrifice and resolve required to solve this problem; the Americans who go to work every day, who support their families, who pay their taxes and who want to pass on to their children and grandchildren the opportunities that they have enjoyed. Americans who are tiring of supporting the "looters"; both rich and poor, who Ayn Rand described as the people who believe that their needs give them a right to other peoples property and money. Even if you don't agree with my solutions, a pledge will help get a realistic national debate underway.
To reiterate, Lanser won't ask you for money, and he won't "borrow" contributions, whatever that means. But he does believe that people will give him money because, well, he's, uh, Jerry Lester. Lanser. Whatever.
No matter what happens, Lanser should rest easy knowing that he can't do worse than Tancredo, who registered less than 1% in national polls before he dropped out of the 2008 Presidential race. So there's that.
Republican Dan Maes, the 2010 GOP nominee for Governor (it still feels weird to write that) is apparently not letting his bygones, uh, be.
We didn't have a chance to get to this earlier in the week, but didn't want to forget to mention it. On Tuesday, Maes sent out a long note to supporters and people who "want the truth" detailing his continued anger at Tom Tancredo, Steve Durham, Bob Beauprez, Josh Penry, etc., etc. We were forwarded Maes' "newsletter" as it appeared on a Facebook page, and we've included the entire missive after the jump.
The 2010 election is old news, certainly, but it's interesting to read Maes' detailed account of some of the events leading up to his nomination for Governor, as well as his calling out a handful of Republicans individually:
Bob Beauprez - you broke my heart. You mentored me and you called me from Chicago right after the assembly to congratulate me personally. Your radio commercial was a betrayal to me and conservative voters.
Freda Poundstone - you called me 4-5 times a day, even at 7:00 AM on the weekend to snoop around while acting like you supported me. Shame on you. You gave 300.00 to another candidate and told him not to cash it until after his election. The games you played.
Josh Penry - you were a hired gun that could not hit a target. Your political capital is gone except in parts of GJ and with some of your cronies.
Greg Brophy - you sell out to whomever Penry tells you to.
Ted Harvey - be thankful for your strong R base in Douglas County. Their loyalty to you is admirable and your loss for chair has been your chastisement.
Click after the jump to read the full "newsletter," complete with references to The Christmas Story, Men In Black and a sermon about giving forgiveness 77 times.
UPDATE (11:25): The big Denver paper and many of the other big TV stations have some major problems with their reporting. The Denver Post, for example, had Buck ahead of Bennet 48-46, on the strength of a 52-45 advantage in Boulder. A quick check of the Boulder Clerk and Recorder's website has Bennet leading Buck 67-29. There are a lot of somebodies who should have caught this immediately -- there's no way Boulder County would go solid red for any Republican.
We recommend sticking with the results from Fox 31, which not only has a page that seems to actually load correctly, but isn't making any obvious errors that we can see.
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UPDATE (11:16): It looks like we may be headed for at least one state legislative recount. In HD-29, Democratic Rep. Debbie Benefield trails Republican Robert Ramirez by 148 votes (50.34% to 49.66%).
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UPDATE (11:12): That didn't last long. With 56% of ballots counted, Bennet and Buck are now tied at 47-47.
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UPDATE (11:00): Buck has pulled ahead of Bennet for the first time tonight, leading 49-46 with 49% of precincts reporting.
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UPDATE (9:50): It's looking like the race that will have the biggest impact from an ACP candidate will not be the one anybody expected. The Secretary of State race is neck-and-neck, but the ACP candidate is already pulling 6% of the vote. Buescher may well win this seat by virtue of the American Constitution Party.
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UPDATE (9:44): The percentage of precincts reporting continues to rise, and Michael Bennet continues to hold a 50-45 lead over Ken Buck. This is not good news for Buck, because early returns should have favored him (Republicans voted in higher numbers than Democrats in early and absentee voting). Given Buck's numerous gaffes in the last two weeks of the campaign, it's not likely that late voters are going to choose him over Bennet, so it's hard to see how Buck is going to make up 5 points with 27% of the vote already tallied.
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UPDATE (9:08): It's always fun to see those really early returns that show absurd numbers. In HD-22, Democrat Christine Radeff is pummeling Republican incumbent Ken Summers 7,875 to 12. Yes, 12. For a few more minutes, anyway.
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UPDATE (9:05): Republican Cory Gardner is being declared the winner in CD-4.
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UPDATE (9:03): The Secretary of State race is coming down to the wire, and may be decided by the number of votes pulled in by the American Constitution Party candidate. Meanwhile, the race for Attorney General seems to be widening in favor of incumbent John Suthers.
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UPDATE (9:00): Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter has been declared the winner in CD-7.
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You didn't really think he could make it all the way to election day, did you? We hope this clears up why, while everybody else was joining the handwringing bandwagon as American Constitution Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo began his "surge," and the absurd whitewash meme of the "new Tancredo" tried to get legs under it, our only question was how long he could keep this up.
As the Pueblo Chieftain'sPatrick Malone reports, not long enough.
During a campaign swing through Southern Colorado on Tuesday, Tancredo told supporters about his perception of the threat Obama poses.
"It's to the Constitution, to the Bill of Rights," the Canon City Daily Record quoted him as saying. "It's not al-Qaida, it's the guy sitting in the White House." [Pols emphasis]
...At an Oct. 22 debate with his opponents, Democrat John Hickenlooper and Republican Dan Maes, Tancredo defended past inflammatory statements he has made.
The moderator pointed to past remarks by Tancredo that called for the bombing of Mecca, characterized Miami as a third-world country, whether he has the temperament to be governor, advocated literacy tests for Colorado voters and painted Obama as the greatest threat to the nation. He then asked whether Tancredo has the temperament to be governor.
"I absolutely do not regret (the statements)," Tancredo answered.
Our readers will recall that Tancredo said something very similar to this, at a rally for GOP Senate candidate Ken Buckjust before the primary. After a couple of days of hemming and hawing, Buck agreed with Tancredo--and took hits in the press for days afterward. That was before Tancredo jumped into the gubernatorial race as a third-party candidate, of course, so Buck was the one who looked bad. Now, Tancredo's self-inflicted wounds carry a price for himself; in addition to all the Republicans who have rallied to his standard out of desperation, amnesia, or whatever is going on.
And that isn't the only jaw-dropping Tancredo gaffe in this final week of campaigning--The Denver newspaper reports today that Tancredo embellished President Barack Obama's oft-misquoted remark about how some "bitter" people "cling to guns or religion." The thing is, Obama never mentioned "white people." That's, rather unsurprisingly, just what Tancredo imagined hearing.
Or, as Tancredo said, "take the most inflammatory one I can think of and accept that it's true."
Now that, dear reader, is the Tancredo we know.
Bottom line: the gubernatorial race in Colorado has been over since several weeks before the Republican primary. All that has happened since then has been a sideshow with one possible outcome. Make that two outcomes: Governor John Hickenlooper, and a bunch of embarrassed Republicans who will spend the next few months wondering what the hell they were thinking -- particularly if Dan Maes ends up with less than 10% of the vote.
On Monday we posted screenshots from Facebook accounts of Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes and supporter Joseph Harrington about alleged continued attempts by American Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo to negotiate a way for Maes to exit the race for Governor. Tancredo and friends denied the accusations, naturally, but the story is far from over.
As Fox 31 reports, Harrington claims to have "proof" of the discussions via a voicemail from Tancredo campaign manager Bay Buchanan:
A voicemail has surfaced in which Bay Buchanan, Tom Tancredo's campaign manager, can be heard inviting Dan Maes to come to the negotiating table, apparently contradicting the Tancredo campaign's statements this week that they have not been looking to make a deal to get the embattled GOP nominee to quit the governor's race.
The recorded voicemail was sent to Joe Harrington of Highlands Ranch, a Maes confidant, who posted a video of himself playing the voicemail on Facebook Thursday morning.
"Tom is within four points of Hickenlooper," Buchanan says in the message, which was sent at 12:56 p.m. last Friday. "It's the time. He's got to find somebody he trusts to talk to us, somebody who he trusts their word.
"Give me a call if you're interested. I won't bother you any more if you guys aren't, but the time is now. The time is absolutely now."
So what does Tancredo's campaign have to say about this voicemail? That it's all Harrington's fault...or something:
But, Buchanan says that Harrington first opened the door to negotiations last week when he walked into Tancredo's campaign office and met with [Cliff Dodge (a Tancredo advisor)] last week -- and that her voicemail was a response to his initial inquiry about a way for Maes to exit the race.
"He came to us and indicated that Dan was tired and might be interested in getting out," Buchanan told FOX 31. "We do not deny having many conversations with them, because we felt like we had a contact with Maes and that we might be able to work this all out. [Harrington] wanted us to put something in writing, he even mentioned specific jobs. And I sent him the law that states it's illegal to even talk about those types of things. We said he could be involved in the campaign, but beyond that we were very clear that we couldn't offer him a job.
"When he asked what we could do, we told him 'nothing'."
None of this is going to change the fact that Democrat John Hickenlooper is going to be elected Governor in two weeks. But at the rate this spat is going, somebody (if not several somebodies) may be looking at serious legal problems.
It's bad enough for Republicans that they have essentially given away the Governor's race for a second straight cycle, but what they really don't need is for this mess to produce serious legal challenges that include various GOP officials ending up giving depositions on potential backroom deals. From all indications, there are a lot of different people who had conversations with Maes over the last few months about getting out of the race for governor, and it's not out of the question that many of them could be dragged in front of lawyers over the next 12 months.
Colorado Ethics Watch earlier this week called on Maes to disclose details of any potential offers in a press release:
Republican Gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes today pointed to a post on Facebook from a supporter named Joseph Harrington about apparent continued efforts by Republicans to get Maes to leave the race for Governor.
Talk about beating your heads against the wall. Republicans have been trying to get Maes out of the race since at least July, and he has yet to agree to any of their deals. So why would they keep trying, especially with the election just a few weeks away now? Do they really think Maes is suddenly going to decide to drop out now? Of course he isn't, and the more that these stories continues to come out, the more that the Republicans involved risk getting exposed for obviously illegal activity (assuming this is true).
Is independent Tom Tancredo now becoming the de facto Republican candidate for governor of Colorado? He's now moved to within four points of Democrat John Hickenlooper to turn the race into a toss-up.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Colorado finds Hickenlooper with 42% support, while Tancredo, the candidate of the American Constitution Party, earns 38% of the vote. Support for Republican Dan Maes continues to fall and now stands at 12%. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided.
Less than two weeks ago, Tancredo earned 35% of the vote to Hickenlooper's 43% and Maes' 16%. That shifted the race from Solid Democrat to Leans Democrat in the Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 Gubernatorial Scorecard. Now the race moves to a Toss-Up.
First off, we don't believe for a second (and neither do most informed politicos in Colorado) that the governor's race here is anything close to a toss-up. Democrat John Hickenlooper is going to be elected governor -- he's been too far ahead for too long, and he has significantly more resources than Tom Tancredo.
But news of this poll from the notoriously right-leaning Rasmussen Reports is not actually helpful for Colorado Republicans. Tancredo is going to (rightly) tout these polling numbers as proof that he can defeat Hickenlooper, which will do two things: 1) Convince more potential Republican voters to choose Tancredo over GOP nominee Dan Maes, and 2) Give a big boost to American Constitution Party candidate Doug Aden in CD-4.
According to Rasmussen, Maes is sitting at 12% of the vote, just two points away from falling under the 10% required to cause Republicans to lose their "major party" status. More significantly, any rise for American Constitution Party candidate Tancredo makes Aden look more credible as well, and just about every vote that Aden receives is a vote that would have otherwise gone to Republican Cory Gardner in CD-4.
As "The Fix" reports yesterday, Democrats across the country are suffering the fallout from a weak top-of-the-ticket showing:
Rick Snyder may be House Democrats' biggest nightmare.
The Michigan Republican, a former head of the Gateway computer company, is running way ahead of Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero (D) in the Wolverine State's gubernatorial race. (A poll released Sunday gave him a 20-point advantage.) Such a wide margin for Snyder creates the potential for a down-ballot sweep that could wash out Democrats' chances in two hotly contested House districts...
...With Snyder leading Bernero by such a wide margin, there is considerable concern among Democratic strategists that a poor performance at the top of the ticket could make just enough difference to sway the 1st District and 7th District races against them.
The situation in Michigan is the most extreme - but far from the only - example of how Democratic struggles at the top of the ticket could well cost the party a handful of congressional contests on Nov. 2.
"Getting tied to an unpopular ticket hurts with swing voters, but it also makes it even harder to rally your base and get them to turn out," said one Democratic consultant who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the problem candidly...
...In close races - and there will be lots of them at the House level in 22 days' time - a few hundred votes can make all the difference. And that's where a stronger-than-expected (or weaker-than-expected) than expected showing at the top of the ticket will matter - in a major way.
There's no mention of Colorado in this article, but Republicans stand to face the same problems with the, uh, less-than-venerable Dan Maes as the GOP candidate for governor. We've been saying this since even before Maes's primary victory in August, when it became clear that the Republican Governor's Association would not be playing in Colorado.
As we've also said, this is why ballot-chasing and GOTV efforts will be so critical to many other top races. For example, Cory Gardner's campaign in CD-4 needs to find those Republican voters -- who might have lost interest in casting their ballot after watching Maes flounder around for months -- and make sure they still decide to vote for him. But without RGA money in Colorado, there are fewer resources available for exactly those ballot-chase and GOTV efforts that many Republicans candidates rely upon. That's the dangerous doubly-doozy you get with a disaster of a gubernatorial candidate like Dan Maes.
We've discussed before in this space the many various repercussions that could come from the Gubernatorial candidacies of American Constitution Party (ACP) candidate Tom Tancredo and Republican Party nominee Dan Maes, but apparently the downside is even worse than we thought for the GOP.
As we've written before, Colorado law designates "major party" status on any political party whose candidate receives more than 10% of the vote in a general election for Governor. Republicans who support Tancredo over Maes -- their own Party's nominee -- may be crippling future Republican candidates for years to come. Check out our previous post on the perils of opening the door for more ACP candidates, but there's a much bigger problem if Maes fails to generate 10% of the vote in November (which is very possible).
If Maes doesn't get 10% of the vote in November, then the Republican Party will become a "minor party" for the next four years. As the big Denver newspaper reports, this could cut in half the amount of money every Republican candidate could raise. "Major party" candidates are automatically on the ballot in both the Primary and General Election races, whether they have opponents or not. The benefit of this is that "major party" candidates can raise money for both a Primary and a General election campaign.
But "minor party" candidates are NOT automatically placed on the Primary ballot -- they only appear on the Primary ballot if they have an opponent. So if Maes gets less than 10% of the vote (which would be in part because so many Republicans supported Tancredo for Governor instead of Maes), then for the next four years Republican candidates could only raise half as much money as Democrats or ACP candidates.
For example, an unopposed Republican candidate for State Senate in 2012 could receive a maximum contribution of $200 from each donor, while a Democrat or ACP candidate in the same race could get a $400 check from the same donor. D'Oh!
"(The Republicans) would really be behind the eight ball on that. Maybe for governor or some statewide offices they'll be opposed," attorney Bill Zimsky told The Denver Post. "But there will be plenty of Senate and House seats that will be unopposed, and they'll be totally whipsawed by this."
Lynn Bartels reports over at the main Denver newspaper that Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes has hired George Culpepper to assist his campaign.
Culpepper, you may recall, was once the campaign manager for the gubernatorial bid of Republican Scott McInnis. McInnis hired Culpepper back in September 2009, but Culpepper left the campaign just a few months later to start his own political strategy firm.
Last spring, Culpepper started working for the gubernatorial campaign of Joe Gschwendtner, although "Joe G's" campaign seemed designed only to discredit Maes prior to the GOP State Convention (in which Maes defeated McInnis anyway). Joe G since failed to make the ballot, ending his campaign.
Culpepper is now back...working for Maes...despite the fact that he was once working for Maes' chief rival...and despite the fact that he was once on a campaign that had the sole purpose of trying discredit Maes. Given the anemic fundraising of the Maes campaign, perhaps the joke is on Culpepper, whose salary can't be much more than bologna sandwiches and pocket change for gas money.
Nevertheless, Culpepper will have an interesting tale to tell; he's got to be the only person in Colorado history who will have been directly involved with three failed campaigns for governor in the same election cycle. That's hard to do.
