Colorado’s U.S. Senate GOP primary: What you need to know

June 9, 2016

This week, nearly a million Republicans across Colorado will get ballots in the mail for the big U.S. Senate primary. Voters will choose which conservative is best equipped to beat incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet in the fall.

The 2016 GOP race for this hotly contested seat has already been unusual, even by our swing state’s own standards. A sprawling stampede of some 15 Republicans has been hacked down to five in the past few months. In that time, scandal, lawsuits and allegations of fraud and excessive campaign contributions have thrown the primary into turmoil.

A perceived front-runner has fallen on his face. A little-known county commissioner has excited the grassroots, stunning politics watchers and gaining national attention. Three of the four Republicans running had to sue Colorado’s Republican secretary of state to get their names on the ballot. And one candidate even drew national laugh lines by reminding a reporter who showed up to his house that he owned a big, “protective” dog.

And yet.

For all the attention this primary has garnered both inside and outside Colorado, plenty of plugged-in Republican voters here still haven’t rallied around a standout. And there’s been no public polling in the race to gauge whether or how these candidates are connecting to voters.

“I haven’t really made up my mind,” said Lyn Martin of El Paso County following a recent candidates forum in Colorado Springs. “It’s hard. It’s pretty crazy.”

That same night, Monument resident Nick Hartley and his wife agreed they still don’t know who will get their vote by the time they mail in their ballots before the June 28 deadline. Both said they wished they could just smoosh all five Republicans together.

For a May 20 story in this publication, one county Republican Party chairman couldn’t immediately name all five GOP candidates without being prompted. (To be fair, I blanked on one of them myself during a C-SPAN interview on June 7.)

Throughout the campaign, the Republican Senate candidates have talked about racism, terrorism, morality, media coverage and the candidacy of Donald Trump. And they’ve also talked a lot about how much they all agree with each other that a Republican should replace Bennet in D.C.

So, who are these people?

Darryl Glenn: Inspiring the grassroots, campaigning everywhere

A current El Paso county commissioner, Darryl Glenn is a lawyer, a member of New Life Church and a former Air Force officer. Throughout his campaign he has said a few things that make him stand out. One is that he doesn’t think the next Republican U.S. Senator from Colorado should worry about reaching across the aisle and finding compromise or common ground with Democrats. Instead, he thinks Republicans “need to step up and lead.”

The former weightlifter who was once on the cover of Powerlifting USA magazine in the ‘80s talks a lot about God and his faith.

As Glenn sees it, the election for U.S. Senate in 2016 is mainly about foreign policy and national security. He has said the United States might have to consider closing military bases to “become more lean and efficient.” And if so, as the only candidate to serve on what’s called a BRAC— a Base Closure and Realignment Commission— he says he has the experience to help.

Glenn has been in the race longer than anyone else: He already has been campaigning for more than a year. But he’s also the most underfunded candidate in the primary, according to the latest federal campaign disclosure filings. No matter. Glenn has said he doesn’t care about raising money. He says he doesn’t want special interest cash and is focusing on a “grassroots campaign.”

In practice, that makes Glenn the only candidate on the ballot to have made his way there through the complex caucus-assembly process. That effort culminated in his winner-take-all victory at the April 9 state Republican convention in which he stunned political observers by snagging 70 percent of the vote from about 4,000 Republican delegates after a rousing speech. Glenn knocked out six other GOP rivals from the U.S. Senate race that day, including sitting state Sen. Tim Neville.

Glenn often touts his electability, since he was elected and re-elected onto the Colorado Springs City Council and the El Paso County Commission. He styles himself as a strong defender of the unborn and calls himself an “unapologetic Christian, constitutional conservative, pro-life, Second-Amendment-loving American.”

As for policy proposals, Glenn wants to lower corporate and property taxes, and he says Democrats have declared a “war on coal.” He believes government policies should allow charities and community programs do the work of alleviating poverty.

Glenn, who got divorced from his wife in March, says he would not vote for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to keep his title, and he is backed by the Senate Conservatives Fund, a group that helps hard-right underdogs get elected, and whose Super PAC is running ads for him. Glenn also has the endorsement of Sarah Palin.

A handful of rural Republican Party county chairs recently told The Colorado Independent that they’ve seen Glenn campaigning in their communities more than any other candidate, and that he has more support there than others.

Democrats have dispatched trackers to record Glenn’s public statements and have filed open records requests for both his votes on the county commission and his public e-mails.

Glenn’s style is one of calm confidence. In an interview before his now-famous speech at the state party’s convention in Colorado Springs, Glenn predicted he’d be the only one of seven candidates to make it out of the convention. That was a bold thing to say, especially when plenty of observers had framed Neville as a front-runner. Party insiders were saying they thought two candidates might make it out, since each would only need 30 percent or more to stay viable.

When Glenn won outright, it shocked everyone but him.

Glenn is also the most accessible candidate in the race. He’ll attend a function for a rural group of Republicans in an out-of-the-way farm community and quickly return a reporter’s phone call as soon as he’s free on the drive back.

He also seems bemused by the perception of others in the race as front-runners just because they have establishment endorsements or more campaign cash. At a recent candidates’ forum sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Black Conservatives, skipped by rivals Keyser and Graham, Glenn joked to a reporter that he figured journalists covering the race would skip too — so they could go chase down Keyser.

The 34-year-old Keyser, with whom Glenn has sparred in previous debates, didn’t say why he’d missed the event.

But Glenn has also drawn criticism for other things he’s said about Keyser. The Denver Post editorial board slammed him for a “cheap shot” after Glenn questioned Keyser in a debate and subsequent media interviews about the circumstances under which Keyser earned a Bronze Star in combat. Glenn said he’d asked because of what he had heard from “the rumor mill.”

Jack Graham: The moderate

Former Rams quarterback and Colorado State* athletic director Jack Graham is occupying the moderate lane in this five-way race. Graham was a registered Democrat until about a year before he chose to run as a pro-choice Republican. (When asked about that, he reminds voters that Ronald Reagan was once a Democrat, and so was Cory Gardner.) And while he has said he supports Donald Trump for president, that support has eroded in the aftermath of Trump’s latest attack on a federal judge Trump says can’t be partial to Trump because he’s “a Mexican.” The judge is from Indiana. Graham says Trump will have to earn back Graham’s support.

Graham is unique in this primary as the only candidate to successfully avoid getting slathered with scandal during the process of petitioning onto the ballot: He was the only one who didn’t have to sue the Republican Secretary of State to do so. Graham seeded his campaign with $1 million of his own money, hired former state GOP chairman Dick Wadhams, and chose to petition his way onto the ballot instead of going through the caucus-assembly process like Glenn. Graham paid a company that gathered more than enough signatures, so his name will be second on the ballot under Glenn’s.

What made Graham want to run for U.S. Senate? The Iran nuclear agreement forged by Obama and supported by Bennet “was the tipping point,” he has said. At his campaign kickoff, he talked more about his biography, his star-power campaign team and his family than he did about his policy stances.

In person, Graham similarly sticks to his personal biography. “I think at this early stage in the process the objective is to get people to know who I am, what my background is,” he said in an interview with The Independent prior to one of the debates in Denver. Like some of his challengers, he mentioned that he’s not a career politician who has never held or even run for office. And, also like plenty of the others, he said he’s taking aim at dysfunction and gridlock in Washington. As he sees it, the GOP needs to represent individual liberty and freedom.

“We’re in desperate need of a change of leadership and a different way of doing things,” he said. “I think that’s a key theme.” Graham says his views on issues like immigration and healthcare are different because he avoids hyperbole and “the kind of language that’s expressed just to pick a fight and draw attention to oneself.”

That said, Graham had harsh words for Hillary Clinton, whom he says “sold the Secretary of State’s office, in my opinion, to the highest bidder for the benefit of the Clinton Foundation” and “lied to the families of Benghazi.”

On TV commercials, Graham pitches himself as “not a lawyer,” but rather a businessman who gets things done. His policy proposals include “a competitive corporate tax rate, a predictable and reasonable regulatory environment, and a better educated and trained workforce,” and a “peace through strength” foreign policy that protects Israel. He wants to replace Obamacare with a portable, open market solution that includes personal health savings accounts. He favors a Non-Citizen Work Visa program that would include a “a penalty for having entered the country illegally,” and “background checks to avoid the risk of terrorism and criminality.”

Graham’s tenure at the Colorado State* has been a campaign problem for him lately after rival Robert Blaha pointed to internal university documents critical of Graham’s time as CSU athletics director, a position from which he was fired.

He has also more recently come under fire for comments he made about black youths and marijuana use.

Jon Keyser: He’s on the ballot

A 34-year-old corporate lawyer, Jon Keyser gave up his first-term seat in the Colorado House of Representatives for a shot at beating Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet. When he announced, Keyser parachuted into the race with dazzling press coverage and the patina of fairy dust from the national GOP establishment. After multiple top-tier Republican heavyweights in Colorado took a pass on the race this year – from Congressman Mike Coffman to his wife Cynthia, the AG, to high-profile Denver-area District Attorney George Brauchler – Keyser looked perhaps poised to freeze the field.

But the former combat veteran and oil rig worker’s campaign operation didn’t seem to match the initial excitement. Keyser chose to petition onto the ballot and hired a Republican-leaning firm that contracted with a Democratic-leaning firm to collect the requisite 1,500 signatures from registered Republican voters in each of the seven congressional districts to qualify for the ballot.

Then scandal struck.

At first, the Republican secretary of state’s office said Keyser didn’t turn in enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. But Keyser’s campaign sued and a judge said Keyser substantially complied. (In Colorado, judges use a more lenient criteria than the secretary of state when it comes to allowing candidates on ballots.)

Two other candidates, Robert Blaha and Ryan Frazier, also were initially denied access by the secretary of state, diffusing the hit to Keyser’s campaign – at least at first. But then a progressive group started looking into the signatures the Keyser campaign gathered and found something fishy. There appeared to be some forgeries.

Subsequent interviews by Denver TV reporter Marshall Zelinger with alleged petition signers found a signature gatherer apparently had forged the names of a dozen or so voters for Keyser’s campaign. That campaign contractor also apparently signed the name of a dead voter. A district attorney has been investigating the potential fraud, and the petition gatherer was arrested in June.

An old political axiom is that often it’s not the scandal people remember, but how a politician responds to it. Keyser’s initial reaction didn’t help his campaign. In an awkward video of a portion of one debate that has gone viral, the candidate repeated multiple times that he is “on the ballot” without responding to several questions about the alleged forgeries.

Things got worse from there.

In a later interview with Marshall Zelinger, Keyser referred to him as “Mitchell” multiple times, accused the reporter of “creeping around” the candidate’s house, waking up his kids, doing “the Democrats’ work,” and meeting his “huge,” “very protective” dog. (Zelinger had rung the candidate’s doorbell during the afternoon after his reporting efforts were stonewalled by the campaign.)

The petition signature issue has dogged Keyser’s campaign since, followed by the revelation that although he said he was a lifelong Republican, he briefly left the party to become an unaffiliated voter while in law school.

Keyser spins topics like immigration and energy into national security issues, and much of his campaign has focused on his combat experience in the military, when he fought terrorists. His military record as provided to media show him as “a lauded officer who went to flight school after graduating from the academy, determined flying wasn’t for him, and ‘voluntarily deployed to Iraq.'” His TV ad touts his service as a military intelligence officer who “conducted capture-and-kill missions to remove high-value targets in urban areas.” But the rest of the ad has been panned as a falsehood. “Obama wants to give these guys nuclear weapons,” Keyser says in his TV spot. “And Michael Bennet, he was all for it.”

The nonpartisan Politifact Colorado has given that statement a “pants on fire” rating, asserting that “It’s ridiculous to say Obama and Bennet wanted this deal because they want to give Iran a nuclear weapon.” The Denver Post editorial board wrote that Keyser’s claim in the ad “is not only offensive, it’s preposterous. And Keyser doesn’t have license to throw wild accusations around regarding Iran because he did the noble work of fighting its proxies.”

During his campaign, Keyser has lashed out at the news media for the way reporters covered his snafus. His campaign has pointed to the negative hits on him by liberals as evidence Colorado Democrats are scared about him being the one to face Bennet in the fall.

Robert Blaha: A non-politician outsider all in for Trump

Blaha is a wealthy Colorado Springs businessman who runs a firm called Human Capital Associates that conducts leadership training for businesses. He’s running as an outsider, non-politician with TV ads that include bits about rectal penetration and exploding toilets. Blaha has plenty of money and is self-funding much of his campaign. He is perhaps making the biggest bet of any candidate in the race that Trump fever will translate to votes.

His strategy revolves largely around his “product guarantee” pledge that if he doesn’t complete his campaign promises (cutting the deficit, securing the border and implementing meaningful tax reform) after one term in office, he’ll voluntarily leave the Senate. “That’s not been done, by the way, and the reason that’s not been done is the people who enter into politics don’t want to be held accountable,” he says.

Blaha had the same trouble as Keyser and Frazier in petitioning onto the primary ballot. He had to sue his way on, and in the process he called for the resignation of Republican Secretary of State Wayne Williams for the way his office handed the primary petition process.

The move led one TV interviewer to question whether Blaha has a temper.

Unlike some of his stealthier GOP opponents, Blaha has remained very accessible to the press, promptly returning phone calls and clarifying his stance on issues. But Blaha, however, has also had to return something else: excessive campaign contributions he took from a wealthy Aspen donor.

During a recent candidate’s forum in Colorado Springs, he said he doesn’t believe waterboarding is torture.

What sets him apart from the others running, he says, is his background in business and years teaching how to lead organizations, dismantle bureaucracies and eliminate waste. He says he’d stack up that experience next to anyone else in the race.

One issue Blaha likes to underscore is the importance of cybersecurity and how Colorado could be a potential hub for it worldwide. “Cyber is the next big play,” he says. “We need to go out and really optimize that.”

In March, Blaha put out a digital ad trying some campaign jiu jitsu on one of Democratic incumbent Bennet’s signature issues: Banning members of Congress from becoming lobbyists.

Although Blaha liked Ted Cruz, he is now a hardcore supporter of Donald Trump since The Donald became the presumptive nominee. He is, he says, all in for Trump and hopes every Republican is, too.

Despite Blaha’s self-styling as a non-politician or member of the permanent political class, this isn’t his first foray into politics. In 2012 he ran unsuccessfully against Colorado Springs Republican Congressman Doug Lamborn in the GOP primary — an experience he refers to now as a root canal without Novocaine. But he’s taking a “totally different tack this time” and says he’s a more focused candidate.

When Blaha is around other Republicans who complain about the state of affairs these days, he says he complains right along with them. But he notes that he always asks one question: What’s your solution? “If they don’t have one, I’m just done talking,” he says.

The conservative editorial board of Blaha’s hometown newspaper, The Colorado Springs Gazette, has endorsed him, calling him “smart, rough-hewn and tenacious,” and saying “If ever there were a time for the likes of Blaha to win a major election, it is 2016 — a year in which voters have made clear their desire to reject politics as usual.” The editorial also made a point to note Blaha is “happily married.” The other hometown candidate’s in the Gazette’s coverage area is Glenn, who got divorced in March.

Ryan Frazier: Zombie hunter

Ryan Frazier is the “zombie hunter.” That’s what his latest TV commercial calls him, anyway. Seriously. As Frazier tells it, Washington is full of elite “takers” whom he calls the “walking deadheads” that are “devouring our freedoms and tax dollars.”

At a candidates’ forum in Denver, Frazier jokingly thanked the moderator for putting “the two black guys with bald heads” next to each other. He was seated beside El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn who, like Frazier, meets that description.

The former Aurora City Councilman runs a small business that “provides strategy development and professional services across the aviation, tourism, energy, education and healthcare sectors.” He won’t disclose his clients.

The candidate founded a charter school and served as an intelligence analyst in the Navy. He emphasizes his experience in both the public and private sectors.

Frazier describes himself as “pro-job growth, pro-balanced budget, pro-life, pro-second amendment, and pro-worker.” On the stump, he talks about criminal justice reform and student loan debt as much as national security. He’s interested in a federal bipartisan reform package introduced by U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa. That program would recalibrate prison sentences for certain drug offenders, help ex-inmates re-enter society, allow judges greater discretion in sentencing lower-level drug criminals,

“I just think we’re spending a ton of money to lock people up for nonviolent crimes,” Frazier says. “Frankly, I think a conservative solution is to look at what reforms we can make to our criminal justice system to focus our resources where they are best spent.” He doesn’t have a strong opinion on the use of private prisons in America.

On the trail so far, Frazier has tried to position himself as someone who appeals not only to Republicans, but also unaffiliated voters and people he calls “soft Democrats.” That starts, he says, with talking about jobs, a strong national defense and national security, secure borders and repealing Obamacare. He says he knows what it’s like to have to work paycheck to paycheck. “I believe we have to foster a culture of work,” he’s said. “I think we need to transition from a welfare system to a workfare system.”

He also talks about closing what he calls a “middle-skills” job gap.

A Christian, Frazier says his faith guides him.

He has a one-liner about Bennet and the potential Democratic presidential nominee being on the same ticket in the fall: “We don’t want to have a corrupt Hillary Clinton colluding with a do-nothing Michael Bennet.”

Frazier went through the petition process and is one of the three candidates who had to sue his way onto the ballot. What set him apart from Blaha and Keyser in that process is that he took his case to the Colorado Supreme Court, attacking as unconstitutional the way the state handles the petition process. The high court allowed him to stay on the ballot.

Though his status on the ballot had been in question during part of his campaign, he touted himself as a candidate attacking a “broken system” and fighting for Coloradans.

“I’m not the establishment guy,” Frazier told The Independent. But, he added, “I have enough political experience” to be a U.S. senator.”

OK, they are all running against Michael Bennet. Who is he — and is he really vulnerable?

Bennet, nicknamed “The Accidental Senator” in a 2015 in-depth profile in Denver’s 5280 magazine, is a wealthy, 51-year-old Yale Law School graduate and businessman. He previously ran Denver’s public school system, worked as chief of staff to Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper when Hickenlooper was Denver’s mayor, and served as a business advisor to conservative billionaire Phil Anschutz.

Bennet was nominated — not elected — to the U.S. Senate in 2008 by then-Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter when President Barack Obama appointed then-U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar to a cabinet position. In 2010, voters chose Bennet to keep the seat during the midterm elections. He beat then-Democratic Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff in a heated primary, and current-GOP Congressman Ken Buck in the general election.

Bennet isn’t a flashy senator, nor a firebrand. It’s likely most Coloradans wouldn’t recognize him if they sat next to him in a craft brewery. When he spoke at this year’s big Democratic Party fundraising dinner in Denver, he made a self-deprecating joke about his public speaking abilities.

But he’s keenly adept at cultivating personal connections. He knows his facts on both domestic and international issues. And his office often is credited for its effectiveness working with other members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. He’s also skilled at raising money, and once chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which fundraises to help elect other Democrats around the country.

Bennet’s dad was the president of NPR and Wesleyan University. His mother is a Holocaust survivor. His brother James, the longtime editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, recently took the helm of The New York Times’ editorial page. And Bennet’s wife, Susan Daggett — whose environmental law job brought the couple to Colorado — runs an environmental and natural resources institute at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law.

As for policy, Bennet’s campaign says he’s most proud of being a member of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight,” which helped write a comprehensive immigration reform bill. The campaign also touts his work helping rewrite No Child Left Behind as a bipartisan law that reduces high-stakes testing and restores local control of schools.

Bennet pushed back against the Obama administration when it cancelled NASA’s ORION project, which employs 1,000 Coloradans at 22 companies in the state. He worked with Republicans to allow veterans who live more than 40 miles from a Veterans Administration clinic to receive their care at non-V.A. facilities. He rankled many fellow Democrats — especially environmentalists — by supporting the $8 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline that would stretch from Canada to Texas.

He introduced legislation to prevent government shutdowns with his GOP counterpart, Sen. Cory Gardner. The close working relationship between Colorado’s two senators is a topic much touted in press releases by Bennet’s office.

Bennet has also introduced legislation to ban members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists. He wants to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates on corporate money in politics, and to pass the DISCLOSE Act to hold dark money groups accountable. He supported Obama’s Iran nuclear arms deal, a move multiple candidates running against him say is the reason they entered the race to oust Bennet from office.

Bennet’s top five campaign contributors include financial and real estate firms, lawyers, leadership PACs, and lobbyists.

Democrats say he’ll hold onto his seat in part because 2016 isn’t expected to be a wave Republican year like 2014, when Gardner rose to power. Bennet also has a lot of money — about $6.7 million — in his campaign coffers so far, and voting demographics in this 2016 presidential election year are likely to help Democrats. Party brass hope that because Bennet’s known as a bipartisan lawmaker, he might be harder to tag as an Obama drone, a Republican campaign bludgeon wielded heavily against Democrat Udall in 2014.

But it won’t be impossible. As ammunition against Bennet, Republicans point to his support for Obama’s Iran nuclear arms deal and his backing of Obama’s plan to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

Republicans aim to seize on what they perceive as a lack of enthusiasm for establishment Democrats, which they say is evident by Bernie Sanders’ 19-point win over Hillary Clinton — whom Bennet is backing — at Colorado’s March 1 caucuses. They expect any further escalation in controversy over Clinton’s classified State Department emails to hurt Bennet in the general election.

Says Colorado Republican Party spokesman Kyle Kohli: “Bennet will be saddled to a candidate this November who was thoroughly rejected by the Democratic base and who Coloradans as a whole gravely distrust.”

But Bennet might also have some problems when it comes to Democratic support as well. During the Democratic state convention, Bennet, a superdelegate for Hillary Clinton, was booed by Sanders supporters who chanted “Change your vote!” As The Colorado Independent exclusively reported in April, Bennet has also come out against ColoradoCare, a ballot initiative that would make Colorado the first state in the nation with universal healthcare. The move raised the profile of Arn Menconi, the Green Party candidate in the U.S. Senate race who is taking on Bennet from the left. In May, Colorado’s largest labor union took a pass on endorsing Bennet because of his stance on trade.

Late last month, The Washington Post reported Bennet is one of the least-known U.S. senators among voters in their home states.

But Bennet is on the air with a TV commercial promoting his ability to curb “Washington regulations” harmful to Colorado farmers and beer brewers. Another ad highlights his work with Republican Cory Gardner, and efforts to ban lawmakers from becoming lobbyists.

Why did so many Republicans run to challenge him this year?

That depends on who you ask.

Democrats point out that there’s no top-tier Republican candidate running this year like there was in 2014. That year, Cory Gardner, a popular sitting congressman from Yuma with talent as a retail politician, cleared the field of competitors when he jumped late into the race that March. None of the dozen-odd contenders in the GOP primary has anything close to Gardner’s name recognition.

Congressman Mike Coffman and his wife, state Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, both decided not to run this year. So did George Brauchler, the district attorney who prosecuted the Aurora theater shooting trial and was being wooed by some Republicans as a challenger to Bennet. That left a pack of lesser-known contenders, which Dems have referred to as a “clown car.”

Republicans counter that Bennet is so vulnerable this year so many Republicans in Colorado jumped at the chance to take him on.

How much will the presidential election factor into this U.S. Senate race?

The answer is: a lot. And it can’t be understated.

Because a presidential candidate will be on top of the ticket, a lot more Coloradans will vote than they would in an off-year election such as 2014, when Republican Cory Gardner ousted Democratic U.S. Sen. Udall from office.

There’s also something of a crisis happening in the GOP establishment. With Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee, Democrats have been tying his most salacious statements to the field of Republican candidates, all of whom have said they will back him as the leader of their party.

Trump’s influence on this particular race was made clear in early April during a televised debate in which moderators at the start asked each candidate to defend Trump’s policy proposals and rhetoric on issue after issue, ranging from whether American soldiers should kill the family members of suspected terrorists to whether women should be punished for having abortions.

Trump’s recent behavior, however, has been too much for at least one candidate in Colorado’s U.S. Senate race. During a June 8 9News debate, Jack Graham said Trump lost his support after he criticized a federal judge by saying the judge could not do his job properly in a case he’s overseeing against Trump University because the judge is “a Mexican” and Trump wants to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. The judge was born in Indiana.

Graham said Trump must apologize.

Will we have any more chances to learn more about these candidates before the primary?

Indeed. Here’s the schedule so far:

On June 10: Americans for Prosperity held an economic forum in conjunction with KNUS radio at the Omni Interlocken in Broomfield. You can watch that forum here.

*A previous version of this story misstated the name of a university.

[Photo credit:Benh LIEU SONG via Creative Commons on Flickr]