DENVER – In a switch that shakes up the Senate contest in Colorado, U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner will forgo re-election to challenge Democratic incumbent Mark Udall while GOP front-runner Ken Buck drops out of the primary race to run for Gardner’s House seat, Republican officials said Wednesday.
Buck confirmed Gardner’s entry in the Senate race and said he was running for Gardner’s congressional seat.
“I have talked to Cory, and I feel that he would be a great candidate for the U.S. Senate,” Buck said in an interview. “I am stepping aside so he can run against Mark Udall.”
Gardner declined to comment as he left the U.S. Capitol.
The entry of Gardner, seen as more electable by GOP strategists, changes the political landscape as Democrats defend their Senate majority and Republicans battle to gain the six seats they need to control the chamber.
The news elated Republicans in Washington and Colorado, where some party members were concerned about Buck’s prospects. He narrowly lost his challenge against the state’s junior senator, Michael Bennet, in 2010 largely attributed to statements he made that angered some gays and women.
Gardner, 39, was viewed as his party’s best challenger to Udall, but last year, he said he wouldn’t enter the race. At that time, Udall was seen as having a safe seat and polling well ahead of his possible challengers. Gardner’s refusal to run was yet another indication that Colorado, once a Republican-leaning swing state, was trending to Democrats.
In a poll released last month, however, Udall barely led his challengers, and President Barack Obama’s approval rating in Colorado was a dismal 37 percent.
Gardner’s switch comes at the last minute. Caucuses that begin the process of choosing candidates for the primary race are scheduled Tuesday. A second path to the primary ballot involves gathering signatures from the state’s congressional districts by March 31.
Republicans are expected to easily hold Gardner’s House seat.
“He is exactly the kind of young, articulate, substantial Republican who can not only win a statewide election, but can break this 12-year stranglehold Democrats have had on this state,” said Dick Wadhams, former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.
Gardner would enter the race with $876,000 in his House campaign account that he can immediately use in the Senate contest – more money than the other three major Republican candidates had combined. Udall has $4.7 million available.
One of the other GOP candidates, state Sen. Owen J. Hill, said Wednesday that Gardner had called him two weeks ago urging him to leave the race. “This is exactly why Republicans keep losing, because we’re cooking these backroom insider deals,” Hill said in an interview, vowing to stay in.
Republicans believe Gardner is a superior candidate to Buck because he does not have Buck’s history of gaffes and is younger than Buck, 55. But Democrats immediately moved to link the two men, who have a lengthy political history in Colorado’s rural northeastern corner.
Matt Canter of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee said Gardner “wants to decimate Medicare, slash education and even make common forms of birth control illegal.” Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Rick Palacios released a statement calling Gardner “simply a Ken Buck radical who is neck deep in Washington sleaze.”
Gardner represents a vast district that runs from the lonely high plains at the Nebraska border to the prosperous suburbs at the far southern edge of Denver’s metropolitan area. He has forged close relationships with House leadership and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the 2012 vice presidential nominee, during his time in Washington. He sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and plays a major role in energy issues.
Last fall, Gardner announced that his family’s health insurance had been cancelled because it did not comply with the minimum standards of the Affordable Care Act and that they had to buy a more expensive plan. Outside groups have already aired ads attacking Udall for voting for Obama’s widely unpopular Affordable Care Act.
