The first three candidates nominated were mostly ignored as they gave speeches limited to twelve minutes, Greenheck studiously reading his speech. All of them hit one hot button issue after another: immigration, abortion, creeping or steamrolling socialism, health care.

Greenheck touted the fact that he was the only medical doctor in the race. Barton was proud to be the only engineer. On the evils of lawyers and career politicians, they all agreed.

All of them painted Jane Norton as a moderate. Most of them trying to run to the right of the field.

Barton not so much. He sounded like an environmentalist and a moderate at times, and Tidwell was polished enough to make you believe he has a chance, until you checked your scorecard.

Introduced fourth, Ken Buck was the first candidate to receive serious applause. In fact, the vast majority of people in the building were clapping.

“My dad taught me two things about the playground. Never pick a fight and never lose a fight,” said Buck’s son Cody in seconding his nomination.

Rather than give much of a speech himself, Buck had over a dozen people give seconding speeches. References to the tea party drew overwhelming applause and whistles as did speakers referencing gun rights.

“Candidates need to respect the assembly by coming here and asking for your support,” Buck said to loud applause, taking a shot at onetime frontrunner Norton, who decided controversially after losing the March caucus straw poll to Buck that she would petition straight onto the ballot.

Buck said that too often, Colorado has sent people to Washington in the expectation they would change Congress. “Instead Congress has changed them.” He said it was wrong to bail out banks and auto companies. “We are bankrupt and if we continue on this path, we are morally bankrupt as well. I will fight for a balanced budget amendment.”

Buck said “arrogance and corruption” were rampant in Washington, D.C. He accused Congress of freezing benefits for veterans and Social Security recipients “and then the Senate give themselves a $7000 raise. We need to pass term limits and make sure they cant stay in the cesspool too long,”

He drew one of the strongest ovations of the day when he said that if foreign leader came and bad mouthed America, he would “get up and walk out.”

Voting for nominees is scheduled to take place at the end of the day, but it’s clear Buck will win the Senate nomination.

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“This health care bill isn’t about health care. It’s about the destruction of the constitutional republic we’ve lived in for the past 200 or so years.”

Did Denney get that line from Virginia-based Americans for Limited Government, a conservative advocacy group with a $4 million budget? Yes, one way or another and whether he knows it or not, that’s probably exactly where he got it.

Tom Lucero speaking at a tea party protest in April.

Contacted by the Colorado Independent, retired steel worker Denney said he essentially sat down and banged out the petition and submitted it for review to the Southern Colorado Tea Party petition committee.

“They took out some of the wordiness and shortened some of the sentences,” he said.

Here’s the section of the petition printed by the Pueblo Chieftain:

The planned health care legislation will “cost taxpayers trillions of dollars, enslave us to a dictatorial bureaucracy, from which you will be exempt, that will end our right to choose our own medical care, and, foremost, that Congress does not have the constitutional authority to pass a law that will force Americans into submission to a government-run health care plan.”

You might say the work doesn’t specialize in nuance. In fact, that’s what the New York Times said in September about Americans for Limited Government.

The group says, its daily barrage of e-mail messages go to more than 90,000 conservative advocates and appear on its main site, GetLiberty.org. Its NetRightNation.com site allows handy access to thousands of local conservative blogs, sorted by state and issue. Together, they feed a ferociously negative view of the administration to talk radio hosts, Web pundits, Congressional aides and small-town newspaper columnists.

[...]

Americans for Limited Government does not specialize in nuance. A recent e-mail message labeled Mr. Obama “the biggest liar of all,” and a piece on Mr. Obama’s enthusiasm for the national volunteer service agency AmeriCorps suggested a parallel with Hitler Youth.

A call for the resignation of Representative Charles B. Rangel, the Democratic House veteran who is under an ethics investigation, included a fake photograph of the congressman behind bars. The seven senators who voted against stripping federal financing from the community-organizing group Acorn were tagged the “Sordid Seven…”

[ALG head Bill] Wilson seemed a bit abashed about the vitriol, but he said a more restrained voice would be lost in the political cacophony. “If I need to make my point, I’m going to make it in a provocative manner, because that’s how it attracts attention,” he said.

Two weeks ago, on 13 November, a couple hundred miles straight north from Pueblo where Denney drafted his petition, the Tea Party of Northern Colorado held a candidate forum in Loveland. Five hundred people attended, including candidates for the U.S. House and Senate and for governor. There were maybe three people under 30 years old in the large conference hall and those three were children ineligible to vote. There were maybe fifteen people under 40. The rhetoric from the stage was fiery.

Candidate for U.S. House District 4 Tom Lucero said Americans’ “freedoms and liberties are under assault” and that the “constitution was being kicked to the curb.”

U.S. Senate candidate Cleve Tidwell told the crowd he had lived in two socialist countries. “I know it when I see it. I know what it looks like. I know it can happen…. this country will be socialist in three years unless we make change.”

On each of the tables at the event– roughly fifty tables– were spread ten or so postcards addressed to Sens Udall and Bennet and 4th District U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey. The cards asked the Congressmen and woman to oppose health care reform because it was bad legislation that was bad for the economy and bad for Americans. More than a few times, the forum hosts asked the crowd to fill out their names and addresses on the cards and turn them in at the door. No need to attach postage.

Event organizer Lesley Hollywood told the Colorado Independent that “an individual, a man named Rick Hicks” distributed the cards.

“I said, ‘Hey if you want to spend your own personal money on that, you go ahead,’” said Hollywood.

But Rick Hicks didn’t spend his own money printing or mailing the postcards. Rick Hicks is an Americans for Limited Government spokesman who, in addition apparently to dropping in at Tea Party of Northern Colorado events, is working “in the congressional district” of Arkansas U.S. Rep. Mike Ross.

Here’s what Hicks told conservative site OneNewsNow in July:

“I don’t want the IRS fining me $2,500, telling me I have to be in the public option — so it’s really coming down to this is not healthcare reform. It’s government takeover of our lives and control of our lives, when you’re telling people that they have to be in the public option.”

Hicks adds it is possible under the proposal that taxpayers would be paying for abortions and sex-change operations.

“It’s this catering to these specific groups where we come in and we give them what they want, almost as a payoff,” he notes. “It’s insulting Christians. It’s insulting to people of faith.”

Has Jerry Denney met Rick Hicks?

Denney is now 66, so I asked if he was on Medicare, the government-run health care system.

“I’m not prepared to comment on that,” he said. He was fixing his wife’s car and didn’t want to get into it. “I’m holding this phone in my greasy hands. Maybe you could come and help me fix this thing….

“Answering your question, really,” he said, “it would just take us away from the point. That would take us away from the meat of the matter, it would get us into the hair or the tale or the hoof,” he said.

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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.

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Complete Colorado, a roughly year-old right-leaning website mostly known as a news aggregator, reported yesterday that on August 17, NRSC New Media Director Vincent Harris registered two Norton campaign domain names: “www.nortonforsenate.com” and “www.janenortonforsenate.com.” The registrations list Harris as both the administrative and technical contact. Calls to Harris’s office at the NRSC this morning have so far gone unreturned.

Republicans see Bennet’s seat as a prime target. Although he has worked in government for years, Bennet has never run for office. He was appointed to the Senate by Gov. Bill Ritter when the Obama administration tapped Ken Salazar in December to head the Department of the Interior.

Ben DeGrow, a policy analyst at the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute, has been all over the Complete Colorado report at his Mount Virtus blog, lamenting this kind of premature “candidate coronation process,” which he said has deflated conservative grassroots power and has ended in a string of GOP defeats.

The move by the NRSC all but confirms reports posted by the Colorado Independent early this week that Norton was poised to join the field of GOP candidates vying for the chance to unseat Bennet.

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez this week announced he was withdrawing from the race. Republicans remaining in the ring include Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier, businessman Cleve Tidwell, Crested Butte attorney Luke Korkowski and former state Sen. Tom Wiens of Castle Rock. Radio personality Dan Caplis has also flirted with running against Bennet.

Norton would be the only hopeful who has run for election statewide, albeit as the running mate of popular Republican Gov. Bill Owens when he sought his second term in 2002. Since the two left office in 2007 (after Owens ran up against term limits), Norton has been the founding executive director of the Denver Police Foundation, a charity that raises money to bolster officers and public safety in general. During Owens’ first administration, she headed the state Department of Health and Environment.

To what degree her experience as a candidate with Owens makes her the best candidate to challenge Bennet and one worthy of early “coronation” is now the subject the right-blogosphere will begin parsing in detail.

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“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.

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The longtime mountain retreat of the late Republican President Gerald Ford, Beaver Creek annually hosts the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) World Forum –- a conservative confab that attracts the likes of Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich -– but Saturday’s event will have a much more local flavor.

Republican candidates for state and national offices who’ve announced they’ll attend include Dan Maes, Scott McInnis and Josh Penry for governor; Ken Buck, Ryan Frazier, Cleve Tidwell, and Mark Van Wyk for U.S. Senate; John Suthers for state attorney general; Scott Gessler for Colorado Secretary of State; and Walker Stapleton for state treasurer.

AEI’s Peter Wallison, the former White House counsel to President Reagan and a special assistant and counsel to Nelson Rockefeller, is the featured speaker Saturday night, but also look for Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute and Colorado conservative radio fame to tackle the state of the state Republican Party.

With “Platinum”-level tables of 10 going for $2,500, don’t expect a lot of town-hall-style heckling from enraged liberals, but tickets at the door are only $80, so one never knows. This is the resort, after all, where Cheney had a Denver man (who later sued) arrested for allegedly jostling him and questioning his war policy as vice president in 2006. And where some residents fear terror attacks stemming from such high-profile guests.

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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.”

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Two powerful Democratic constituencies are unhappy with Ritter, the AP’s Steven K. Paulson reports. Union activists are looking for a primary challenger to take on the governor after Ritter vetoed two bills supported by labor, and some Hispanics are still seething over Ritter’s appointment of Michael Bennet to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Ken Salazar.

Republican challengers include former U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis and Evergreen businessman Dan Maes. Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry and former state lawmaker Tom Wiens are also weighing bids.

The governor hasn’t made a secret of his plans to seek a second term, a spokesman told The Colorado Independent. According to his most recent fundraising report filed with the Colorado secretary of state, Ritter had $125,609.21 on hand at the end of March. His campaign’s next report is due in July and will cover fundraising through the end of June.

Ritter defeated Republican Bob Beauprez, a two-term congressman, in a blowout in 2006, winning 56 percent of the vote. Democrats took control of the Colorado Legislature in the previous election for the first time in decades.