Wally Stealey, a longtime lobbyist and political mover in Pueblo, said Romanoff called him Friday morning to tell him he had decided to run.

“If I’d have had my choice, I’d have him running against Ritter,” Stealey said. “But I didn’t get my choice. That doesn’t matter. You don’t always get your choice in politics.”

The Post’s Michael Riley and Christopher Osher report that Romanoff’s supporters had urged the 43-year-old Denver Democrat to challenge Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter in a primary, building on discontent with the first-term governor’s veto of two bills backed by organized labor. But, according to sources the Post didn’t identify in its first report, Romanoff has decided instead to take on Bennet, whose controversial appointment by Ritter in January surprised political observers and angered supporters of more high-profile state Democrats, including Romanoff.

Stealey said Bennet’s early fundraising advantage — mostly raised from out-of-state donors — could disappear once Romanoff tapped disgruntled Democrats and labor groups, described as “eager to funnel money toward a primary challenge.”

Stealey said early feelers that he has made suggest there is “$1.5 million out there that’s real early money” that Romanoff will pick up.

Bennet, who had never run for elective office before winning the Senate appointment from Ritter, vastly outpaced potential Republican rivals with strong fundraising during the first two quarters of this year, raking in more than $2.6 million.

Among announced GOP candidates, Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, who is reportedly dropping from the race early next week, raised $330,000, followed by Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier, who took in $140,000 through June.

Buck’s withdrawal could come just a week after reports former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton plans to enter the race for the Republican nomination with the backing of National Republican Senatorial Committee officials.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter. And we’re hiring.

Democrat speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff at a Denver town hall forum. (File photo/Jason Kosena)

Former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff is readying a primary challenge to incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.

Supporters urged Romanoff to mount a primary challenge to Gov. Bill Ritter, whose surprise appointment of Bennet left some party activists angry, the Denver Post’s Michael Riley and Christopher N. Osher report, but the 43-year-old Denver Democrat has instead decided to take on Bennet.

Romanoff has offered a campaign staff position to a “veteran Democratic strategist,” the Post reports, and plans to make an announcement next month. Romanoff’s campaign could rely on supporters — including labor groups — who “pledged to back him” if he challenged Ritter.

Labor leaders have been angry at Ritter since the governor vetoed two Democratic bills backed by unions.

“It is unclear whether the same level of enthusiasm would exist for a challenge of Bennet,” the Post reports, adding that some have cautioned Romanoff against taking on Bennet when the incumbent has already raised $2.6 million through June this year.

A Romanoff challenge to Bennet could rend Colorado Democrats. U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, who was elected just months before Bennet won appointment, formally endorsed Bennet earlier this summer. Freshman U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, who took over Udall’s 2nd District House seat, is raising campaign money for Bennet through a fundraising committee.

The prospect of a Democratic primary caps a week of shakeups in the Colorado Senate race, rated earlier this week among the most likely to switch parties by Democratic-leaning polling guru Nate Silver.

On Monday, former congressman and failed gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez said he won’t enter the Republican primary race the same day rumors swirled that former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton planned to jump in.

By the end of the week, Norton’s entry sounded more likely as news emerged that the National Republican Senatorial Committee was already helping her campaign. Also late Friday, reports broke that the fundraising frontrunner for the GOP nod, Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, plans to drop out of the race early next week.

Romanoff topped some polls and had an active group of supporters in December when Ritter was considering his pick to replace Ken Salazar, who stepped down from the Senate seat he won in 2004 to take an appointment as secretary of the Interior in the incoming Obama administration.

In January, Romanoff handed over the gavel to incoming House Speaker Terrance Carroll after giving up his statehouse seat due to term limits. He has been a “scholar in residence” at the University of Colorado at Denver School of Public Affairs since leaving the Legislature and last year earned a law degree from the University of Denver law school.

Other Republicans in the running include Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier and businessman Cleve Tidwell. Crested Butte attorney Luke Korkowski and former state Sen. Tom Wiens of Castle Rock are exploring whether to join the field, and KOA radio personality Dan Caplis has flirted with the notion of running against Bennet.

The 2010 primary election is nearly a year away, on Aug. 10, but Democrats and Republicans will begin sorting out candidates at March 16 precinct caucuses and through an assembly and convention process that winds up in May.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter. And we’re hiring.

“What really was the deciding factor for us was knowing we would have to forsake, set aside, all of our family interests, everything we’ve got going on,” Beauprez said in the closing minutes of the KHOW 630 AM radio show he guest-hosted Monday afternoon. “At least this cycle, it won’t be me.”

Beauprez also sent an e-mail to supporters before the radio show and posted the news on his web site Monday afternoon.

Saying he planned to “keep my powder dry, at least for a little bit,” the former state GOP chairman declined to endorse any of the hopefuls seeking the nomination. “Not right now,” he said when co-host Craig Silverman asked whether Beauprez favored a contender. “I am virtually certain the field is not set,” he said, perhaps hinting at the rumored decision of former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton to jump into the race.

Beauprez floated his name as a possible candidate early this year and then mostly disappeared from view until recently when lackluster fundraising totals from Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck and Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier had some Republicans wondering if those two were up to the task.

Bennet, seen as vulnerable by some political observers, tallied more than $2.6 million in the first two quarters of the year, far outpacing potential challengers. Buck raised $330,000 and Frazier reported $140,000 in the three months ending June 30. Both waited until the second quarter to launch their campaigns.

None of the other potential candidates — businessman Cleve Tidwell, Crested Butte attorney Luke Korkowski or former state Sen. Tom Wiens of Castle Rock — raised money in the most recently reported quarter. The next quarter ends Sept. 30 and fundraising reports are due to the FEC on Oct. 15.

Beauprez suggested the eventual Republican nominee could have to raise $10 million, “or perhaps $12, $15 million if it gets competitive.”

Right before making his announcement on the radio, Beauprez posted a lengthy explanation for his decision not to run on his web site. After recounting a life of public service — including two successful runs for Congress early in the decade and a loss to Democrat Bill Ritter in the governor’s race in 2006 — Beauprez lays it out:

I’ve stayed involved, keeping my eyes open for other ways to make a difference. Not every opportunity is the right one though, and having been presented with the potential to serve in the United States Senate, Claudia and I considered it very carefully. However after significant reflection, I will not be a candidate for the Senate in 2010.

While there are still plenty of opportunities for the Democrats in the Senate, I believe that the Republicans are now slightly more likely to gain seats than to lose them, potentially threatening the Democrats’ supposed filibuster-proof majority.

Even though Bennet has amassed a fortune in campaign funds since his January appointment to fill Ken Salazar’s seat, Silver says the relative obscurity of the whole field means national trends — favoring Republicans these days — could make the difference.

7. Colorado (D-Bennet)
An underwhelming field all around in Colorado; nominal incumbent Michael Bennet has a net-negative approval rating, but his most likely Republican opponents aren’t liked any better. A race like this is likely to be determined by national factors, rather than local ones, and right now those factors are looking much improved for Republicans, especially in a state where Obama’s approval ratings have been poor relative to his election-day performance.

Bennet’s seat was in seventh place last month too, when Silver called it “effectively an open-seat race,” but an added upward-pointing arrow indicates Silver thinks it’s more likely to switch now than it was a month ago. Considered a safe seat when Salazar held it, Silver’s rankings have moved Bennet’s prospects steadily up the chart since March, when the Colorado seat only ranked 11th in likelihood of switching parties.

Bennet’s potential opponents include Republicans Ken Buck, the Weld County district attorney; Ryan Frazier, an Aurora city councilman; Bob Beauprez, a former congressman and failed candidate for governor; Tom Wiens, a former state senator; and businessman Cleve Tidwell.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter. And we’re hiring.

Nonetheless, returning from what feels like — even better! — a four-day weekend, these Colorado stories caught our attention:

• Former Colorado Senate president and Independence Institute founder John Andrews had a “somber Independence Day” this year because of the “grave danger Obama and his personality cult and his socialist agenda pose to this land we love,” according to an e-mail the Denver Post columnist sent to some Facebook friends and followers. “With this bad man in power,” Andrews continues, “Americans face a new and deadly challenge to our ideals. Let us rise to the occasion.”

“Where does this stop being flowery prose and become … incitement?” blogger JeffcoBlue asks at Colorado Pols, which posts the entire e-mail. Including this assessment of the president: “Our country has had the occasional president who did not believe in the truths of the Declaration or the restraints of the Constitution. But we have never had one who did not believe in the essential goodness of America itself. In Barack Obama, sadly, we now have a president who is an unbeliever of all three.”

Not to be outdone by himself, Andrews’ regular Sunday column in the Post takes a lengthy tour of “Colorado place names echoing with inspiration from something new and special for human freedom” — including some inspired by the James Michener bestseller Centennial — before concluding, rather abruptly: “Our past is present and our past is good. It elevates and nourishes us. Barack Obama talks about remaking America, transforming America, laying a new foundation. He’s welcome to try, but a lot of us will resist fiercely for the reasons indicated here.”

Not that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — the “Quitta from Wasilla” — escapes the wrath of Andrews this holiday weekend either. Palin’s “abrupt exit as Alaska governor fails the backbone test,” he writes in his Backbone America blog Monday. “Whether as a family move or a political gambit, it was poorly prepared and poorly presented. The seriousness, steadiness, toughness, and clarity we expect from national leaders were not evident.” Even though the former point guard formerly known as Barracuda “seems suddenly cavalier,” Andrews isn’t ready to write her off just yet. “2012 and 2016 are a long time away. Backbone Americans will watch with keen interest to see where Sarah goes from here.”

• And the already crowded race for the GOP nomination to take on U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet could be getting more crowded, Denver Post reporter Jessica Fender writes at Politics West. Citing the “dire” economic situation, 34-year-old Crested Butte attorney Luke Korkowski has launched a campaign site to help explore the possibility he might run next year. If he jumps in, he’ll join Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier, Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck and Denver businessman Cleve Tidwell on the hustings.

Former state Sen. Tom Wiens of Castle Rock is also considering a run, notes Face the State, which first reported Korkowski’s interest. Another potential candidate tabbed by the conservative news site, however, has changed his mind. “Mark Van Wyk dipped his toe into the Senate primary pool when he filed paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission to raise cash,” Fender reports. “But he said Monday he’s no longer running in 2010.”

Got a tip? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

State Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma). (Photo/Bob Spencer, The Colorado Independent).

That message, peppered throughout with references to Ronald Reagan and aimed chiefly against the Obama administration, suggested the steep challenge these candidates face in winning office in 2010.

After eight years of Bush administration deficit spending, however, and in light of the relative fiscally conservative approach taken by local Democrats like U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey of the 4th Congressional District, the old Reagan battle lines might not deliver the same punch as they once did, especially beyond the shrimp-boil faithful among the increasing number of swing voters in the state, including young people who never lived through the Reagan years and feel no nostalgia for them.

“The country is on the verge of spending itself out of existence,” said an animated state Rep. Cory Gardner, a Republican from Yuma running against Markey. As the sky drizzled over the shrimp boil hosts’ well-manicured backyard in the tony Warren Lake neighborhood, Gardner railed against taxes and fees as the “enemy of liberty and freedom.” He said he had “sold tractors [his] whole life” and urged the crowd to avoid sending any more “fat cats and bureaucrats” to Washington.

Gardner was unabashedly channeling Reagan and he was stretching. For all of his adult life Gardner has been a lawyer and a legislator. He owns and runs no businesses. His family sells the tractors.

Likewise, Tom Lucero, who is also running against Markey, has pinned his candidacy on the message that he would advance business interests by leaning on the hard-won knowledge he has gained in “creating more than 50 jobs” and having to “meet payroll each week.” By 2010, however, long-time restaurateur Lucero will also have held elected office as a University of Colorado regent for 12 years — making campaign trail digs that he’s a career politician a hard critique to shake.

Notably, when not talking about themselves, Gardner and Lucero stayed abstract. They talked about the country and freedom. Neither man mentioned Markey. Neither man made any reference to her voting record.

As voters know, Markey enjoys solid business credentials. She founded the communications tech company SysCom in the 1980s and in the mid-1990s bought the popular, local Huckleberry’s cafe. In a political teflon-coating vote in this conservative district, Markey did not support Obama’s landmark budget, saying at the time that she was “elected to bring fiscal responsibility back to Washington” and that she believed “Congress must be more aggressive in cutting the deficit.”

Short-hand monikers, therefore, like “fat cat” or “big government tax-and-spend liberal” may be hard to pin on the Fort Collins Democrat.

The Ken Buck brand

Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck is taking a different tack in his run against what he called the state’s “accidental senator” Democrat Michael Bennet, who was appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter to fill the seat of Ken Salazar, who was tapped for Interior secretary by the Obama White House.

Buck didn’t dwell on fiscal policy Friday night and he didn’t hit on social issues. He hit an emotional chord with the crowd by stressing immigration enforcement and gun rights.

“We’re going to win this city and we’re going to win Northern Colorado. The folks in this state are fed up,” he said. “… We have to secure the border and prevent illegal immigrants from coming up here and taking our identities and our jobs.”

Buck made a media splash recently for winning a groundbreaking hate-crimes conviction but also for seizing thousands of confidential records from an income tax office in Greeley in a search for illegal immigrants. The seizure was later declared unconstitutional, a ruling Buck has challenged. His actions in the immigration case have been wildly popular with conservatives but have also been deeply divisive in the heavily Latino Northern Colorado town, which was also the site of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in 2006 that saw hundreds of workers rounded up for deportation.

“You’re fed up with infringements on individual liberties,” he said later. “I want to say it clear: Obama can take my gun out of my cold dead hand,” in an homage to the defiant statement by former NRA chairman Charlton Heston.

But Buck’s political brand — the independent-minded law-and-order immigration warrior — will be challenged in the next year and a half. Even an opponent as untested as Bennet will likely run repeated fact-check campaigns against Buck’s statements on disappearing gun rights and point out the fact at each campaign stop that Obama-era Coloradans own as many guns as they have ever owned and as many as they want to own.

Strident immigration enforcement rhetoric like Buck’s is also under attack — from Colorado Latinos and the left, of course, but also from the right. Influential local conservatives like Archbishop Charles Chaput are already speaking out for immigration policy reform. Speaking at an immigration forum with liberal U.S. Rep. Jared Polis of the 2nd Congressional District this week, Chaput said:

The Catholic commitment to the dignity of the immigrant comes from exactly the same roots as our commitment to the dignity of the unborn child…

Despite all of the heated public argument over the past few years, Americans still find themselves stuck with an immigration system that adequately serves no one. We urgently need the kind of reform that will address our economic and security needs, but will also regularize the status of the many decent undocumented immigrants who help our society to grow.

The Buck campaign will find Chaput difficult to dismiss. Through years of outspoken pro-life advocacy and by essentially campaigning against Obama last year — calling him the most pro-abortion presidential candidate in history — Chaput has more than established his conservative credentials across the state.

And our inaugural post is a doozy too.

The alleged comment by Bob Clark, a volunteer of Republican U.S. Senate hopeful and Denver businessman Cleve Tidwell (and candidate tweeter himself), was uttered at a May 7 campaign rally which set off a week-long conservative blogger maelstrom?

Hey, did you know that the Star of David is really a swastika?

Clark offers up a vigorous denial of the “outrageous and disgusting behavior” charged by his fellow conservatives that serves only to launch another GOP primary foodfight among supporters of announced candidates Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier and Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck and anybody else who just wanted to pile on.

It’s going to be a long election season.

Weld County District Attorney and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck, right, talks politics at the state GOP meeting March 21 in Castle Rock. (Photo/Ernest Luning)

Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck’s landmark hate-crime prosecution of a man accused of murdering a transgender Greeley teen could prove “very much a mixed bag” for the Republican, who emerged Tuesday as a candidate in the 2010 U.S. Senate election.

That’s according to a political analyst who predicts the “hot button issue” of hate crimes could become contentious as Republicans vie for the nomination to challenge appointed Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.

“There’s such a significant constituency of Republican activists who do regard these issues as [the] holy grail,” said Eric Sondermann, an analyst with public affairs and media consultants SE2. “It’s hard to take an attitude of ‘let’s agree to disagree.’ ”

Buck filed first-degree murder and hate-crime charges against Allen Andrade, the Thornton man convicted by a Greeley jury in the brutal beating death last summer of Angie Zapata, an 18-year-old transgender woman. It was the first time Colorado’s 2005 bias-motivated, or hate-crime, law has been prosecuted in the murder of a transgender victim and one of the first prosecutions in the nation of hate-crime laws against an accused killer of a transgender woman.

“Initially, I was skeptical about the use of the bias-motivated crimes statute,” Buck wrote in an opinion article in Sunday’s Denver Post. “Through my exposure to the Zapata case, I was persuaded that these crimes are unique. Bias-motivated crimes are particularly heinous because they target an entire community of people, not just the actual victim.”

That’s by no means a popular position among national Republicans, as evidenced by the vigorous debate Wednesday over a bill to add sexual orientation and transgender status to federal hate-crime law. The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, or the Matthew Shepard Act, passed the U.S. House of Representatives on a 249-175 vote and heads to the Senate.

“It’s very much a mixed bag for Ken Buck,” Sondermann said. “The good news for Buck is the trial put him front-and-center, and he won. And there’s nothing like prevailing in a high-profile murder case.

“The bad news is, hate crimes, as a category of law, is very questionable and is particularly controversial among a lot of Republican audiences and particularly among some Republican intellectuals.”

One local conservative intellectual, Independence Institute researcher David Kopel, doesn’t think the Andrade prosecution will pose a problem for GOP activists when it comes to supporting Buck for the Senate nomination. “When prosecutors win a high-profile criminal conviction, it tends to be a positive thing for them politically,” said Kopel, who authored a 2003 argument against hate-crime laws, titled Hate Crime Laws: Dangerous and Divisive.

“Regardless of what a person thinks of the underlying hate-crime statute, you had a vicious murder here, which [Buck] proved to the jury was not a heated thing,” Kopel said. “Those who believe in law and order and civil liberties would have to say Ken Buck did a very good job.”

Kopel questioned whether hate-crimes statutes are as divisive as some think. Hate-crime laws are “not an issue on which I see a lot of party unity,” he said.

It’s that disunity that could work against Buck, according to Sondermann. “Being the first successful prosecutor of that case puts [Buck] in the middle of that dialogue, and I’m not sure that’s where he wants to be.

“What’s problematic for the party as a whole,” Sondermann said, “is if you have Ken Buck as the successful hate-crime prosecutor, and you have Ryan Frazier with his own independent viewpoint, it puts this whole issue back in play in the middle of the Republican Party.”

Frazier, an Aurora city councilman with his toe in the water for a Senate run, has broken with the party line over gay-rights questions, first as a vocal proponent of a 2006 statewide domestic-partnership ballot initiative and then when he came out early in favor of adding health benefits for same-sex partners of city employees.

It’s the prospect of a third, more socially conservative candidate, that could exploit Buck and Frazier’s unorthodox positions in a bid for the ideological core of Republican voters and “risks making this again prominent,” Sondermann said.

That candidate could be conservative radio talk show host Dan Caplis, who has been publicly weighing a bid for Bennet’s seat. “Caplis’s natural constituency is going to be the social conservative,” Sondermann observed. “There are forces that would pull this thing down to the lowest common denominator.”

“The Republican Party is a large party with a lot of different people in it,” Kopel said, noting that the “gay-rights issue is not as important as others” when it comes to deciding whether a politician is a solid Republican.

“Caplis has also made the point that he’s for preserving the traditional definition of marriage, he’s not anti-gay,” Kopel said. “That’s an important part of how that message needs to be presented — it’s not based on hostility.”

Sondermann dismissed the notion that voters might forget about Buck’s hate-crime views by next spring when the race heats up.

“They’re not going to be front-of-mind a year from now, but with the power of television advertising, direct mail, viral campaigns, that doesn’t mean it can’t immediately be put back front-of-mind. We will hear about this assuming Buck proceeds with his candidacy.”

Buck didn’t respond to a request for comment. He has said he plans a tour of the state this summer to launch his campaign.

As for the dozen Weld County residents who seemingly had no trouble buying Buck’s argument that Andrade committed a hate crime when he killed Zapata?

“Republican voters don’t have judges in black robes to tell them how to interpret the law,” Sondermann said. “Voters get to interpret whatever the heck they want.”

Aurora Councilman Ryan Frazier has been testing the waters for the GOP nomination with an exploratory committee since earlier this month. Radio talk show host Dan Caplis and former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez have also been making the rounds and have said they’re considering a run against Bennet.

Buck has been in the news a lot recently, successfully prosecuting the first hate-crime conviction in the murder of a transgender victim last week in Greeley and defending against an ACLU lawsuit seeking to return thousands of tax records Buck and the Weld County sheriff seized in an identity-theft investigation against undocumented workers.

In his announcement, Buck said he wants to reduce government spending, pursue energy independence and achieve immigration reform. But it all comes down to an old-fashioned American work ethic:

“For too long Washington has forgotten the values of the rest of the country. I believe the strength of America is the work ethic, innovation and persistence of the American worker,” said Buck. “That is the fundamental message I want to carry to Washington.”

Buck is no slouch when it comes to social networking, including links to a Twitter feed, Facebook page and Ning account, though none of the three was active by Tuesday afternoon.

Buck told the Associated Press he hopes to raise $8 million to challenge Bennet, who came out of the box with a record $1.4 million raised in the first three months of this year.