Lang Sias is a Republican candidate running for U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter’s 7th District seat. Today Sen. John McCain sent out an email in support of Sias. It’s the kind of move you might imagine a flyboy Airforce guy would make that would drive the Army grunts on the ground crazy. Fact is, McCain’s fundraiser-email may be more bad than good for Sias, because as anyone who has been reading GOP political news in this state knows, in the mouths of the members of the increasingly influential Tea Party conservative movement here, “John McCain conservative” has become an epithet.
The McCain ask:
Dear Friend…
we share many of the same conservative beliefs in making our country stronger and safer for our families and future generations. I’m humbled by your support, and I know that together, we can make sure that our best days are still ahead of us.
I am writing today to tell you about a great American who shares our values and has served our nation with honor and integrity his entire life. Lang Sias has just announced that he is running to represent Colorado’s 7th Congressional District, and I hope that you will support his campaign.
[…]
He will not allow Democrat Congressman Perlmutter to vote in lockstep with liberal special interests in Washington, DC, when he should be standing with the hard-working families in Colorado.
Effective?
Today, a Colorado Pols blogger reports on GOP activist Laura Stansbury’s Jefferson County Republican Examiner piece celebrating the power of the Colorado Tea Party movement.
The New York Republican Party, she writes, “received a very clear message that what the voters did not want was a watered down, middle of the road candidate about whom no one could reasonably draft a list of expectations once elected.”
The Pols blogger summarizes her argument by writing that “other state Republican parties have joined Colorado’s GOP in shifting away from McCain-type politics ‘to an extreme right of center message, fiscally speaking that is.'”
Sias will of course pull down the conservative vote in his run against Perlmutter but, really, an email from pretty much any other national conservative figure would likely draw more cash than anything signed by McCain.
