October 13, 2009 06:48 PM UTC

Frazier to Drop Senate Bid, Challenge Perlmutter?

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• by: Colorado Pols

Say this about Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier: The man has no problems with beating his head against a wall.

According to The Denver Post, Frazier will soon drop out of the race for U.S. Senate — a race he almost certainly cannot win — in order to challenge incumbent Democrat Ed Perlmutter in CD-7. Which, coincidentally, is also a race he almost certainly cannot win.

As we’ve written in this space before, Frazier made a bold move by entering the race for U.S. Senate early in the process, but all of the air quickly left his campaign when he reported an abysmal first fundraising quarter. Fortunately for Frazier, whatever money he raised in a bid for U.S. Senate translates into a congressional race, but even so, we’re not so sure this is the best move for him politically. Why?

Because in a crowded Republican primary for Senate, the odds are better that Frazier could emerge as the GOP nominee than they are that Frazier could win a head-to-head battle against a popular and well-funded two-term incumbent Perlmutter. Frazier pushed all his chips on the table when he announced he was running for the U.S. Senate, and pulling them back now to run for congress doesn’t improve his odds at being elected — it only reduces the size of the pot.

It would have made a lot more sense for Frazier to run against Perlmutter from the beginning, rather than attempting a U.S. Senate bid. But since he’s already chosen the Senate, he might as well stay on that path. Frazier probably can’t win the GOP nomination for Senate, but he also can’t likely win the congressional seat in CD-7. So he might as well stick with the one that has the bigger payoff.

Quick side note: While we’re on the subject of CD-7, we had to make a comment on this quick section of the story:

Frazier was elected to the Aurora City Council in 2003 and re-elected in 2007.

“I think people forget that as a city councilman at-large, Frazier represents the entire city of Aurora,” said Dick Wadhams, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.

Aurora, population 319,000, is Colorado’s third-largest city.

Yes, Aurora is Colorado’s third-largest city, but the city is split between different congressional districts. Furthermore, city council elections in any place other than Denver, where large sums of money is spent and a lot of media attention is generated, are always generally ignored by the public. A very small percentage of people vote in municipal elections (Frazier won the election with a meager 14,645 total votes in 2007, while 41,836 Aurorans voted for Perlmutter in 2008), so being an at-large candidate in Aurora is completely irrelevant in terms of name ID. No doubt most Aurora voters couldn’t name any of their city council members.