February 10, 2022 01:31 PM UTC

Tim Reichert is the Most Boring Candidate in Colorado

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• by: Colorado Pols

Republicans in the new seventh congressional district seem to be pinning their 2022 hopes on an economist named Tim Reichert as the likely challenger to State Sen. Brittany Pettersen (D-Lakewood) in the battle for the seat being vacated by the retiring Rep. Ed Perlmutter. There are other Republicans in the CO-07 field, including Laurel Imer and Erik Aadland, but Reichert stands out because he seems willing to spend his own money financing a congressional bid (while Imer and Aadland are struggling to attract support).

Like most everyone else in Colorado politics, we don’t know much about Reichert other than the fact that he wrote his campaign a personal check for $500,000. Earlier this week, Reichert was a guest on The Dan Caplis Show on KHOW radio; we decided to listen in on the interview in order to get more acquainted with Reichert. What we heard was the equivalent of an NPR radio host reading from a college economics textbook.

REICHERT: As I was saying into your microphone a moment ago…my first introduction to the economy was an introduction to inflation. My dad would take me to the grocery store. He taught me how to reach deep into the canned good shelves to find this can of beans, or corn, or whatever it was we were looking for, that had been priced, say, two weeks or three weeks prior. And that blew my mind as a kid, right? I mean, the fact that my father’s wage could be lessened by 2% or 3%, you know, in a matter of 3-4 weeks is an amazing thing.

Mesmerizing!

If you’re still awake, here’s Reichert explaining his professional background:

REICHERT: So, I went into industry. I was a partner at Ernst & Young for a time. I led their economics practice for a chunk of the midwest, and later went into investment banking — an advisory firm — I was there for about five years. I started my own firm in 2011, built that up to about 50, 55 economists in five offices here and one in Israel, and sold it in 2018. And, you know, when COVID hit…I have had this, it’s more than a research interest, it’s really sort of a labor of love studying the erosion of the middle class in this country. And I took my COVID year to write a book on — a manuscript, it’s not yet published — a manuscript on the causes of the decline of the middle class. And I kind of chronicled how this happened. How we’ve gotten to this place that the Founding Fathers were so concerned we might land in.

Gah!

There is a part later in the interview in which Reichert says, quite seriously, “People don’t realize this, but we had six homestead acts in our history.” Fascinating stuff!

Reichert had better be prepared to self-fund the hell out of this campaign. It’s going to be very, very expensive to make him seem at all interesting to the average voter.