March 13, 2014 01:29 PM UTC

"Buck or Gardner?" Team Udall Hopes You Can't Tell

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: The Denver Post's Lynn Bartels:

“No matter how closely you look or how hard you squint, there’s no distinguishing Ken Buck’s ideas from Cory Gardner’s record,” Udall campaign spokesman Chris Harris said. “If Ken Buck believes it, the odds are that Cory Gardner has voted for it.”

Gardner spokesman Alex Siciliano fired back.

“No game can hide this: In 2013 we saw that Senator Udall voted in line with President Obama’s positions 99 percent of the time,” he said. “A news outlet yesterday reported that Sen. Udall was avoiding reporters in Washington, but I know that Congressman Gardner is ready to share his ideas for putting us back on the right track with all of Colorado.”

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A fun little quiz site rolled out today by the Mark Udall Senate campaign:

"Buck or Gardner?" The site leads users through a quiz asking whether former U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck or his successor Rep. Cory Gardner made a given statement–on reproductive choice, immigration, gay rights, and other issues. We haven't tested every option, but it looks like most questions are meant to call out the fact that Buck and Gardner have basically the same position on a broad range of hot-button issues.

For those with a short attention span, you can cut right to the citations page.

Obviously, this is targeted at the inside-baseball crowd who is most of the audience paying attention to the Colorado U.S. Senate race right now. But it serves a valuable purpose for the insider and pundit class to see what Udall's campaign is getting at here: the reason Ken Buck was pushed aside in the GOP Senate primary in favor of Gardner is that Buck is considered too far right to win. Buck's known-commodity status, which helped him in early polling, became a liability for Republican strategists counting on a clean break from "Tea Party" losers in 2014.

The problem is, as Democrats hope to drive home between now and Election Day, Gardner is just like Buck.