April 07, 2014 01:07 PM UTC

Royal Gorge Tea Party Straw Poll Shows No Clear Favorite

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• by: Colorado Pols

An update from Carrie Canterbury of the Canon City Daily Record:

Tougher laws and harsher penalties to better protect American citizens, limiting control of the federal government and doing away with Common Core were a few of the hot topics discussed during Saturday's Republican gubernatorial candidate forum at Mountain View Core Knowledge School.

Hopefuls Bob Beauprez, Greg Brophy, Scott Gessler, Steven House, Mike Kopp and Roni Sylvester fielded questions during the event hosted by the Royal Gorge Republican Women and the Royal Gorge Tea Party. Tom Tancredo declined the invitation to participate in the forum.

Roxanna Hollabaugh of the Royal Gorge Tea Party said a straw poll following the forum showed 25 percent of the votes went to Gessler; 22 percent to Beauprez; 20 percent to Kopp; 17 percent to Brophy; and 16 percent to House. She said with about 160 possible votes, a little more than half of the audience submitted a straw poll (58 percent).

This straw poll shows that there there are a lot of undecided Republican primary voters–or maybe a large number of unaccounted for Tom Tancredo voters, who wasn't present–but it's still quite striking how evenly divided the support was among all five of these candidates. In the end, we expect that the better name recognition for Scott Gessler, Bob Beauprez and Tancredo will keep them at the top of such polls for the time being.

Two other candidates now more or less on life support, Greg Brophy and Mike Kopp, could see a boost if Tancredo, who is petitioning onto the June primary ballot, chooses to release his delegates ahead of the state convention this weekend. In that event, we suspect those delegates would in large part shift to Brophy as opposed to Gessler or Beauprez. As for Kopp, the state assembly represents a last slim chance at relevancy.